Cameron Olthuis

I think my TiVo is THE greatest thing since sliced bread, it has literally changed the way millions of people consume television. It allows us to watch TV on our rime. I can rewind, pause, and of course fast-forward through all the commercials. And that’s the very reason why a product loved by some many millions is hated by advertising executives all around the world. Even though I’m sure they all secretly fast-forward through commercials themselves.

According to the New York Times, TiVo is now looking to get into the research business. TiVo is able to track the viewing habits of users but it’s limited on what it can do with data because of its privacy policy, which the company is looking to change this year. At this time TiVo isn’t able to share any of the demographics from their customers but they are able to provide the information about which commercials are watched and those that are skipped during recorded TV shows.

This information is extremely valuable to advertisers because they can finally see that no one is actually watching their advertisements anymore. The networks on the other hand don’t want this information to get out, as it will hurt their ad sales. Maybe this is what it’s going to take to wake these executives up so they can finally realize push marketing is giving leeway to pull marketing, at the very least it opens up a new revenue stream for TiVo.