• The Hollywood Reporter, Thursday, January 29, 2009 9:45 AM

TiVo CEO Tom Rogers admits that TiVo has played a big role in the current TV ad crisis by developing the tech tools that allow viewers to skip commercials. That said, at NATPE he insisted his company is working on new methods for advertisers to reach consumers, and he urged others to do the same.

For example, TiVo research shows that interactive advertising didn't initially catch on because it didn't let viewers pause the program while getting more information about the product. TiVo plans to incorporate automatic pausing so a curious consumer doesn't miss any part of the TV program. Rogers supports contextually based advertising, in which "some real thought" is put into what kind of ads would relate most to viewers watching a specific program.

Rogers notes that there are 30 million DVRs in homes today, with that number expected to increase to 50 million to 60 million in the next three years. Despite this, the ad industry has been slow to come up with new ways to reach consumers through DVRs. One problem, he says, is the fact that "the people who buy and sell ad time are a world removed from the people who create advertising today."

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