NBC Universal Inc.’s recently announced multi-year partnership with TiVo Inc. goes into effect January 1 under which the network will be the first to use TiVo’s audience research service, Stop/Watch.
The service provides detailed ad campaign reports by using TiVo’s interactive Record Tags. The tags target consumers who tend to fast-forward through commercials. An icon will appear and stay visible while a consumer is fast-forwarding.
If the viewer is interested in the product, they can push “select” on their remote, which will pause what they are watching and allow the consumer to opt-in for more information.
Tracey Scheppach, SVP and video innovations director for media buying firm Starcom USA, which was the first media agency to use the service, said, “TiVo is starting to perfect its product toward
becoming valuable to the advertising and the programming communities to really understand ad avoidance.”
Bill McClellan, VP of government affairs at the Electronic Retailing Association, said the move benefits the DRTV community.
“Any time that there are better ways to know what the consumer is doing it’s very beneficial,” he said. “For those in the traditional DR community as well as the brand advertisers, this will be another extension of that direct response model.”
However, Scheppach said there may be a bumpy transition in the marketplace until other major networks cut similar deals. Davina Kent, VP of national ad sales for TiVo, said that the company is in negotiations with those networks.
