Commentary

TiVo Does Ads

By most accounts, TiVo is supposed to be the nemesis of advertising, a weapon with which consumers can zap ads away. That may be changing with TiVo Product Watch, launched this spring, which allows advertisers to deliver ads to premium broadband subscribers who are actively searching for products in given areas. Product Watch allows TiVo viewers to search for content from more than 70 advertisers and 100 brands, from one-minute spots to hour-long instructional videos.

“We’ve offered ads to customers on a purely opt-in basis before,” says Davina Kent, TiVo’s national vice president of ad sales. “We’ve learned that empowered consumers aren’t anti-ad so much as wanting them on their own terms. So offering ads on demand is really a continuity of our overall on-demand orientation.”

Later in the year, TiVo hopes to expand to introduce an automated bidding system for on-demand ads, making it what Kent calls “the Google of VOD advertising.”

 

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