• by Wayne Friedman , July 27, 2007

TiVo Inc. has a new ad sales executive--former Viacom network executive Karen Bressner, who will now be senior vice president of advertising sales for the digital video recorder and service company.

Bressner had been senior vice president of national advertising sales for Nick at Nite, TV Land and TVland.com. She also was vice president of Eastern region sales for Discovery Communications. Prior to her TV posts, Bressner worked at Young & Rubicam Inc. and Foote, Cone & Belding.

In the last few years, TiVo has attempted to gain additional revenue from selling advertising and special-marketing platforms on its service, as well as providing research to advertisers.

In February 2007, TiVo's Audience Research & Measurement unit started up its Stop|Watch ratings service, a second-by-second program and commercial-ratings research product. A number of subscriptions have been sold to ad agencies, networks and other marketing services.