February 15, 2002 TiVo Tracks Viewers and Finds BritneyTiVo uses its form of business intelligence and finds that Super Bowl viewers went for more Britney
By Jeanette Perez Although Terry Bradshaw's impromptu duet with Paul McCartney may be the most infamous 30 seconds of the Super Bowl broadcast, the Pepsi ads featuring Britney Spears were the most replayed, paused, and watched in slow motion, according to data gathered by TiVo Inc. The company used its digital video recorder technology to track the viewing habits of 10,000 of its 280,000 subscribers for the NFL, who, according to published reports, paid for the information that is one of the newest forms of business intelligence (BI). TiVo makes it possible to track what viewers are watching, recording, replaying, fast-forwarding, or watching in slow motion as they watch T.V., and this BI application can prove very lucrative both for TiVo and for the company using the information. TiVo makes money from selling the data and the companies buying it have direct insight into what viewers want and don't want on T.V., which is information that can help advertisers better cage what kinds of commercials work and which don't and give networks an idea of which shows people want to watch. "As this analysis shows, the growth in the use of TiVo technology can have a profound impact on how the Super Bowl audiences of the future will watch and interact with the broadcast," said Mike Ramsay, TiVo CEO. What may be even more interesting is to see how advertisers and networks tailor their broadcasts depending on which audience is watching. According to a TiVo press release, "The data also provide networks and advertisers a sneak peak at the television audience of the future, giving them a head start in developing broadcasts and commercials that can adapt to this changing audience." In his September 29, 2000 article "Prime Time BI," Intelligent Enterprise editor-in-chief Justin Kestelyn wrote that the opportunities TiVo offers "for the creative application of viewer segmentation and clustering are obvious and attractive" and TiVo could become "the information platform for literally millions of micromarketing campaigns." Well, it looks like this analysis of the Super Bowl could be the first step to that direct marketing as next year NFL officials will have a whole new information base on which to make decisions on how they present NFL games to their audience. But TiVo and the ability to know that people like to watch Britney Spears over and over again is not bringing smiles to everyone. TiVo has been the target of many privacy groups who complain that monitoring viewing habits is an invasion of privacy. Most recently, Comcast Corp. discontinued its storage of data that tracks individual subscribers' Internet surfing habits, because of privacy complaints. However, unlike Comcast, TiVo contends that it protects user privacy by not linking viewing habit data to the individual's name, gender, or age. The data is only linked to the viewer's ZIP code. Although this was the largest analysis of a single, live television event, it was not the first. The NFL has paid for the audience measurement data in the past, including earlier playoff games, where a Budweiser commercial was replayed the most. According to TiVo, during the Super Bowl broadcast, viewers used the Trickplay features, such as replay or slow motion, an average of 44 times per household. How much this information affects future NFL broadcasts remains to be seen, but if you see Britney Spears at every commercial break, you'll know why. |
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