Do you watch commercials? TiVo knows, and it’s telling Google
Google has agreed a deal to receive information from TiVo boxes about user behavior. It’s part of the search giant’s program to change the way advertisers pay for promotion.
The Google TV Ads scheme involves the company buying space on smaller TV stations and auctioning the slots to advertisers. The big difference between this and traditional advertising is that Google aims to base pricing on the actual number of viewers who watch an ad rather than the fee being determined in advance and based on viewing figures for the program or the station.
The company already has a deal with satellite firm EchoStar to get precise details on how many channels are tuned to a particular station when an ad airs, which gives some idea of the audience. That still leaves the problem that advertisers don’t know if viewers were actually watching the ad or if they’d left the room during commercials.
The TiVo deal brings that information much closer. Because personal video recorders have the ability for viewers to skip through commercials with the fast forward button, TiVo’s data can show how many viewers did so with a particular ad. While still not a perfect guide, that’s a much stronger indication as to whether the viewer was watching the commercial in question.
At first glance this might seem a strange move by Google as it means the viewing figures for each ad will become notably lower. However, that doesn’t necessarily lower revenues as an advertiser will likely pay a much higher rate per viewer where they are more confident those viewers were actually watching.
According to Google, its systems shouldn’t be seen as a threat to traditional ad sales groups. It believes that rather than stealing away clients, the pay-per-viewer system brings in new advertisers who don’t have big enough budgets to take a risk on slots that might not get a big audience.
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November 24th, 2009
How much more of your life will Google know?
Next thing you know they’ll be the ones flying the black helicopters. Coming soon to a map near you, CopterView (vice StreetView). Who knows, maybe Google has some “Blue Thunder” fans….