Dollars and Jens
Thursday, April 29, 2004
TiVo changes the way advertising is done
"Over the last six to 12 months, the advertising community has turned almost 180 degrees - from being uniformly opposed to TiVo and hating us to now seeing us very much as a benefit overall," he said.It is in the interest of both the advertiser and the intended audience that an ad be seen if that audience is interested in the product being advertised; it is in the interest of neither if not. Unfortunately, most advertising falls most of the time into the "2% of my most narrowly targeted audience will be interested", and sometimes there the benefit net of costs has a different sign for one than the other. Making ads entertaining is one way in which advertisers try to change the balance; in the long term, I expect advertising to be better targetted than it is now.
With DVRs, the effectiveness of ads can be measured. Plus, there are opportunities to market products and services directly to consumers who are interested in them. TiVo is dabbling in both of those areas.
Incidentally, one possible problem for the new liberal talk-show radio network is that its likely audience overlaps so much with NPR. I expect it's aimed at a younger, more energetically political demographic; it will have to keep and strengthen that distinction to get listeners to decide that it's worth listening to advertising.
Det är cross-posted.
