IP: on watching ads and skipping

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Charles Arthur, The Independent" <carthur () independent co uk>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 14:41:15 +0000
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: Re: on watching ads and skipping

Hi Dave...

Re the whole issue of people skipping commercials using ReplayTV, TiVo or
others:

> They thus ruled that since most people weren't skipping commercials, the
> VCR was not hurting the studios, in fact it was giving a chance for _more_
> people to see the ads.  This would clearly not be the way they would see
> it today, and definitely not about a fully automatic commercial skip.

I know that the US gets many more commercials, but when TiVo launched over
here the point was made that this puts the advertisers on their mettle -
they have to come up with ads that will interest people so that even when
viewed at 30x, there's something which makes you think "What was that??"

Having a Pace/Sky TV box (like Tivo without the intelligence) I can confirm
that, at least with British ads, this does happen.

Also, if people do just skip ads with this technology, isn't that a simple
shift of revenue from the TV stations to the makers of these boxes? TiVo
already has systems where it can "plant" ads on your machine in the
overnight dialup, and then show them to you if you show interest in a
"child" version of that ad. I was told by a TiVo veep that they got a
better response from that than standard direct marketing.


        best
        Charles

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