TV stations, advertisers and producers will soon become privy to what TiVo users are doing with their DVR boxes.
Collecting data will provide a boost in revenue for TiVo while helping advertisers figure out which programs and commercials are being watched or skipped. The data collection will be anonymous, and users will be able to opt out of the process, USA Today reports.
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The move is seen as a challenge to Nielsen, which gets its information from voluntarily-installed set-top boxes. While Nielsen doesn't provide "second-by-second" information on how many viewers are watching commercials or parts of television programming, it does have an advantage in reporting demographics and how many people are watching each TV set.
TiVo will use "most" of its customers' DVRs to collect data, USA Today says, including those that are part of DirecTV. Samples will be drawn from markets of 5,000 to 25,000. Todd Juenger, TiVo's audience research and measurement general manager, said there "isn't a gigantic difference" between the TiVo demographic and the general audience, but said it is wealthier, more educated "and, unfortunately, a little more white" than the norm.
A lot of this is business talk, but in the long-term, more detailed information like this could help shape the way we get our television. As DVR becomes more prevalent, content providers will come to understand how much of their audience is waiting until 20 minutes into a show to start watching, and then skipping all the commercials. I dream of a day where advertisers stop putting TV commercials on a pedestal and content providers, in turn, embrace online instead of fearing it.
To that end, it would be nice if the public could see some of this TiVo data periodically.
