What TiVo People Know

[dkennedy]

What TiVo People Know: Part I

Wednesday, May 11, 2005
by Cece Forrester, Media Daily News

DVR TECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN ON the market for several years, yet current estimates put overall penetration in the United States at just 5 to 10 percent. Rapid growth is expected in the next year or two, as word of mouth finally reaches critical mass among consumers, and segments of the TV industry start to figure it out. Some have attributed the initial slow growth of TiVo to a failure to go beyond generalities in marketing the experience.

And going by much of what's been said in the advertising trade press about how people use it and what to do about it, it seems there is a similar gap in understanding on the part of reporters, network heads, and agency media executives. People who haven't experienced this new model of TV viewing and choice have trouble picturing what it does, and thus may discount its appeal.

Those with a stake in the existing broadcast advertising economy resist admitting that big changes are coming. Even those making an effort to deal with the upheavals that DVRs are bringing about, still seem handicapped in their thinking by unfamiliarity with what the machines do and how they work. Statistics don't tell the whole story. If you want get a fix on the attitudes and behavior that will impact both the near and long-term future of TV advertising, you must get inside the DVR/on-demand user's experience.

This early adopter would like to set the record straight, counter some of the misconceptions about DVRs, paint a picture of what the TiVo experience is like, venture a few opinions on where TV advertising is headed as a result, and offer an idea that might be helpful in the meantime.

I have been assured by those unfamiliar with revolutionary technology like TiVo that most people won't care about it because they are content with the existing way of watching TV. But consumer control is the future of media, and any technology that offers more of it is a genie that won't go back in the bottle.

Not only are cable and satellite companies such as Comcast, DirectTV, and Time Warner rolling out their own versions of DVR and on-demand delivery, Comcast will also offer the TiVo branded service to its subscribers. Other on-demand models are being investigated as well; CBS, for instance, is looking at making selected repeats of the network's shows available after the broadcast, by the month, or by the program.

Delivery via computer is becoming a real option as well. Showtime, Bravo and SciFi are offering free online streaming of some of their series' season premieres to help build buzz; the Fox network has online downloads of entire episodes of some of its cancelled series, free or at a small charge.

Placeshifting is becoming as much a factor as timeshifting. A device called the Slingbox Personal allows transfer of content from a TV or a DVR to one's computer, and eventually other devices like cell phones and PDA's. TiVo now offers a "TiVoToGo" feature, which transfers shows between the box and a laptop PC or portable media player. And Sirius has plans to use the satellite radio service to deliver TV content to small screens for backseat viewing in cars.

It's hard to foresee the final form the benefits of these systems will take. This will be a much more complex evolution than the introduction of cable or home videotaping. There are so many kinds of devices now, that rather than the simplistic convergence scenario people used to predictin which the home computer and the TV set are combined in a single boxdevelopment will be about getting the pieces to cooperate with each other.

Many in the ad industry have reacted to the DVR revolution by declaring that the 30-second spot is dead. What is dead or on the way out are dayparts and networks, which are integral to the old TV model, but irrelevant in the new one.

Much ink in the trade press is still devoted to the effects of time slots on the chances of this or that program to succeed. Those who understand the impact of DVRs see this as an obsolescent situation. With TiVo and similar systems, an audience doesn't have to know or care what day and time a new program is on in order to record and watch it.

The ability of a program to find a consistent audience (or vice versa) will no longer depend on memory, keeping up with schedule changes, or on the individual's commitments on a particular day and time weighed against the desire to see the program.

Industry news also remains focused on the traditional network model, with talk of upfronts, sweeps, shares, and who's No. 1 in primetime, continuing as if nothing has changed. While it's not time to abandon them just yet, it's important to understand that many familiar features of the TV business will not survive the consumer-control revolution in their current form.

Networks won't be dead exactly, but their role is bound to change. Until now, networks have been thought of as a "place" or a dial position, but when everyone can access programs by name alone what will a network mean to people? Once the act of "tuning in" ceases to be a framework to hang a network's identity on, it will have to take on a different role.

For now, networks are trying harder than ever to hold on to the time-competitive and dial-position model with maneuvers like starting primetime programs a few minutes early or running late, which can prevent TiVo from recording another network's program in the next hour as it discourages live viewers from channel-switching.

But this can only be a short-term strategy, and could ultimately backfire in people's attitudes toward the entity that's trying to interfere with their choices. When on-demand viewing ceases to depend on recording a real-time feed with a single starting point, this will not be an option.

VCRs theoretically began to liberate us from the real-time model dating back to the early days of broadcasting, but in such a cumbersome way that they did not truly disrupt it. With TiVo and other DVRs now fulfilling the original promise of timeshifting, and as viewers learn to regard watching at their convenience as the new norm, the next phase will be one in which programs are essentially free-floating.

When that happens, the artificial situation in which a program is considered to "compete" with one or two other programs that happen to be "on at the same time," will come to an end. The idea that for a program to succeed, it must cause another good program to fail to meet an audience goal, is no longer operative.

Aside from the limitations of old-style broadcast technology, can you offer a single good reason why this wasteful system ever should have prevailed? Reaching audiences is no longer a zero-sum game.

Part II of this column exploring the features and benefits of TiVo will run tomorrow.

Cece Forrester is a media planner in Chicago. She can be reached at [e-mail].

[dkennedy]

What TiVo People Know: Part II

May 12, 2005
by Cece Forrester, Media Daily News

PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT FAMILIAR with TiVo tend to assume that it is simply another recording device, perhaps an improved type of VCR. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the TiVo user's experience. Originally, viewers had only two choices: Make yourself available to watch TV when a program was on, or miss it. Home videotaping was supposed to change all that. But do you remember why you pretty much stopped using your VCR for timeshifting after the initial fascination wore off?

Looking up when a show is supposed to be on, bending down, pushing buttons, trying to read the display, re-setting the clock, deciphering the tape position counter, rewinding and changing tapes... you soon found it was hardly worth the trouble. On-screen displays were only a partial improvement. But the TiVo form of DVR takes the user experience as far beyond the early '80s-based videotaping process as it transcends the 1950s be-there-or-be-square viewing experience. It does this by overlaying a user-friendly, on-demand interface on existing, real-time program-delivery technology.

Here's a rundown of everything you need to know but didn't know how to ask about the TiVo user's experience, from the initial trip to the store to teaching the machine about your preferences.

There are two pieces to purchase: a black or silver box about the size of a DVD player or VCR, which you get at Best Buy or Target for $100-300 (depending on recording capacity and rebates), and a subscription to the service for $12.95 a month, which is billed to your credit card.

TiVo works with broadcast TV, cable, or satellite. You or your household's electronics wizard connect the box to your TV, cable box and VCR with cables in one of several configurations, and to a phone jack in the same room (you can use a splitter to keep your regular phone equipment plugged in). The system makes an outgoing call once a day to download updated program information. The TiVo box uses the Linux computer operating system, which makes it relatively reliable and stable.

You get a TiVo remote, which brings up the main TiVo menu, which is the interface with search and recording features and settings. It's not quite a mouse, but very easy to get used to. The menu screens are colorful and easy to read. Navigation from screen to screen is fairly quick.

The remote selects channels as usual, but there are several enhancements: Hit a button and it will temporarily display a listing overlay, or Channel Banner, for the program you are viewing, including name of program, channel, program length, rating, actors, episode name, episode description and year originally aired (or year made for movies).

This is superimposed on the screen without interrupting the program. A different button will call up a program guide overlay, or Live Guide, that you can scroll to see what's currently on every channel, or what's on a specific channel hour by hour for 2 weeks ahead. This can replace or enhance channel surfing.

Hit another button to display a status bar showing where you are in the program (e.g. you are at minute 42 out of 1 hour). Another button gives you an instant replay, taking you back eight seconds each time you hit it, which is very useful in answering the question, "what did he just say?" or "did I see what I think I saw?" It soon becomes a habit, to the point where you catch yourself wanting to do the same with the radio, and sometimes even in real life.

Other buttons let you back up at any of three speeds, or pause/freeze the program. Like the instant replay, the freeze capability is amazingly addictive, not just for leaving the room and coming back, but also for examining details such as end credits.

It is easy to set TiVo to record any program, either a single episode or multiple episodes. Once an episode's listing has been displayed, from any of a variety of entry points, the touch of a button adds it to the "To Do List." You can also watch the program while it is being recorded. Unlike a VCR, TiVo lets you watch the earlier portion of a recording in progress.

All recording is to the machine's hard drive. There's nothing to put in, rewind, or remove. Programs can also be transferred to VCR, though this process can only happen at normal playback speed. Newer premium models will allow you to transfer to DVD instead.

One of the things you quickly discover is that conflicts are not as big a problem as you assumed. Many primetime series either offer multiple airings of each episode on the same channel or are repurposed elsewhere. These showings tend to happen at odd times that are not popular for watching live, but ideal for recording. This may explain why, according to new research from Horowitz Associates, DVR users watch more programs on cable than before they had the device.

This reality of scheduling is what prompted me to get TiVo in the first place. It sounded like it would be nice to have, but I felt no urgency. Until, one day, TNT mentioned in their upfront presentation that they would soon be carrying Angel, one of my favorite series... (Great! I thought) but at four in the afternoon.

Epiphany: It's never going to get any better, it's only going to get worse! Already tired of missing "NYPD Blue" when I didn't think to tape it as insurance against a change in evening plans, I realized that TV without serious timeshifting just doesn't work for people any more. I went out and got TiVo a few days later.

Program data is why TiVo is much more than timeshifting. It's actually a search engine for TV. There's no need to look anything up separately, or bring to your selection any prior knowledge of what's on, unless you are aware of something coming up more than two weeks ahead. All the information now resides in the system, updated daily. (This is why TV Guide made a deal with TiVo instead of trying to fight it.)

After learning of its many features and capabilities, one may form the mistaken impression that TiVo is overwhelming to deal with. I have seen it suggested that remembering to set the machine to record one's favorite TV programs will be too much bother for some people. This misses the main point, which is how automatic the system is for the user. There is no "remembering" with TiVo.

Another common objection is that light TV viewers will have no use for something like TiVo, so its penetration is naturally limited. But consider what makes light TV viewers light. These are the people who always were unwilling to accommodate their personal schedules to the networks, very selective about what they watch, and uninterested in putting in the amount of work it would take to compensate for the situation by seeking out the programs and taping them. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't find many programs worthwhile if they could be easily made available at those times when they happen to be in the viewing mood.

The learning curve, especially for seniors, is another objectionthe same one raised ten years ago to explain why the Internet would never catch on with the older generation. But what actually happened? Let their teenage grandson get them set up, and they are soon surfing and e-mailing right along with the rest of us. And much like the Internet, the beauty of TiVo is that you can use it in as streamlined or complex a way as suits you.

Even those who understand the many advantages of TiVo, are aware that it has limitations. You can't record two things at the same time; the menus won't do everything you want; there are too many decisions to make; storage capacity is limited; you can't get a show after its air date if you didn't record it. And there are all kinds of issues for households with multiple viewers and multiple TVs.

Malcolm Gladwell said in "The Tipping Point" that for something new to spread from the early adopters to the masses, it has to be streamlined and simplified. But this is still TiVo's first generation. Its advantage is that it can be plugged in now and work with the existing delivery structure, which is still based in real time. As more and more audiences and delivery systems disengage from this structure, the next generations of on-demand technology can leave these limitations behind.

Already, the formation of a new set of viewing habits is occurring among the early adopters. There's been a good deal of speculation about how people will use these new tools to control their experience with advertising. Much of it and most of the panic turns out to be founded more on inference and partial information than on practical experience.

Tomorrow: What it means, and a modest proposal.

[dkennedy]

What TiVo People Know: Part III

May 13, 2005
by Cece Forrester, Media Daily News

A Modest Proposal

THE TERM "AD-SKIPPING" IS FREQUENTLY bandied about in discussions of TiVo's effect on advertising. It is important to understand that the TiVo DVR does not let you skip commercials altogether. What it can do is fast-forward at any of three speeds through both program content and regular embedded commercials. The system, as currently configured, doesn't distinguish between program and commercials. It is natural to assume that fast-forwarding does not apply to live viewing.

Actually, this is easy to do by watching on a 15-minute delay. Moreover, people who have become accustomed to TiVo will be found to watch fewer and fewer programs live. As a new user accumulates more and more recorded hours, they soon cease to think of real-time viewing as the normal way to watch.

In considering the impact of this behavior, one is tempted to predict that when viewers make the leap to the on-demand world, commercial TV will be forced out of the picture. Some observers will argue that people hate commercials so much that they'll take the free content and blow off all the commercials just because they can.

But this is not what we see at Super Bowl time, when advertisers put up their best work, and the commercials are the entertainment, talked about at the water cooler and watched and re-watched for fun. Clearly people will watch some commercials and like them, if they are presented properly.

Erwin Ephron puts his finger on the real issue in his recent article, "The Uninvited." He draws a connection between the desire to avoid TV commercials and the lack of control over intrusion, pointing out that readers react more favorably to print ads because in going through a magazine, one considers separately whether or not to read each ad. But, says Ephron, the bad commercials drag down the good commercials because TV is not set up for selective avoidance. I respectfully submit that it ought to be.

This is unthinkable to traditionalists who feel that viewers should watch all the commercials, and assume they did so before technology like TiVo started meddling with the implicit contract we had. In fact, people never watched all the commercials; they've always been able to get up and leave during the commercial break, talk amongst themselves, or channel surf. We just kidded ourselves about it.

The traditionalists also declare viewing all commercials to be the fair price to pay for the content advertisers are subsidizing, compensation for the considerable money we shell out for rating points. I would counter that we never needed or expected all the people exposed to a commercial to pay attention to it every time it airs.

The majority of avoidance is the out-of-demo waste and excessive frequency that our research tools have acknowledged for years. We do what we can to minimize it, but we know very well it can never be eliminated. Even so, we saw the problem as one of efficiency for the advertiser, not about creation of unwanted clutter for the viewer. This is what is changing now.

After learning that fast-forwarding is the only way to skip commercials, some advertisers will feel a sense of relief, assuming that if theirs is a high-quality spot, it'll catch people's eye as they zip through the pod, and they will stop and watch it. Actually, this is not a safe assumption.

A study from Magna Global USA found that the longer people own a DVR, the fewer commercials they watch and here's why: Even if they see your commercial fly by and are somewhat intrigued, it requires an inordinate amount of fiddling with the controls to get back to the exact beginning of any one spot. After a time of experimentation, it is found to be too much of a hassle to do very often.

Others take comfort from the idea that people will at least take away the gist of the commercial as they speed through it, but again, this is not a well-founded hope. DVRs on fast-forward don't really speed up the action, they put up a succession of sample frames. You will glimpse the logo, the product and the actors and have a bare-bones idea of what it's for, but gone are all the audio and much of the story line as well. What a waste of the thought and expense it took to create an effective spot! And, since yours is just part of a fleeting mish-mash of images that make up a whole pod, it's not really absorbed very well.

Then there are those whose proposed solution is commercials that are designed to be viewed at fast-forward speeds. Please! "Blipverts" only worked in the fictional world of "Max Headroom," which will forever remain 20 minutes in the future. If you want to distill your message down to a logo and a few words of copy with no need for audio, why spend your media money on expensive TV time? Just buy some outdoor boards.

One feature that has been under-publicized is the availability of long-form ad units on TiVo. It is difficult for the uninitiated to imagine how these work, why such a small audience is worth bothering with, or how these units differ from a boring, cheesy infomercial. Actually, this capability is one of the most interesting things about TiVo.

From time to time, on the main TiVo menu screen, a line item with a star in front of it appears. These are termed "showcases." Occasionally there are more than one of them, rotated each time you access the main screen. A typical showcase is up for perhaps a week. The item is identified by a teaser-style description, and can be either ignored, or selected and opened at will. One may be a new 30-second spot that the advertiser is proud of and wants to show off. Another could be a "making of the commercial" mini-documentary showing how it was shot, special effects added, etc. I found some of these entertaining enough to play many times.

A final element of a showcase may be a response opportunity, which can include a request  forwarded through TiVo  to be contacted, receive information, a video, etc. Or it can refer to a Web site, or list dates and locations of local tie-in events. Theatrical movie trailers often appear in showcase form.

Even without knowing the price structure of these showcases, I'd guess they're well worth it in buzz among the advertiser's sales and dealer network. Then there's the impact on the audience. It's not just the novelty but also the interactivity of the experience, as well as the potential for CRM and taking the viewer a step closer to a sale. Since all this is entirely optional and takes place outside program viewing, it avoids the negative effect of interruption, and the viewers will spend as much time with your messages as you give them reason to. The viewing and response rates are probably a tight secret, but they have to be significant.

Even TiVo has come up with a way to bid for viewers' attention while they're fast-forwarding. The thumbs-up icon is sometimes displayed during certain commercials. It doesn't appear during the program itself, and it doesn't interfere with fast-forwarding through the pod. By pressing the thumb button you exit to a long-form, multi-part message of the same type that is often put up as a showcase on the main menu. You view whatever parts you choose, and, when done, you are returned to the pod at the point from which you left, having missed nothing. This is strictly opt-in, so I don't see TiVo users having a problem with it.

After considering the fast-forwarding problem and the proliferation of advertising options, some will conclude that there is no way to get people to just watch the relevant commercials in the pod, and write off this ad form altogether. I say, not so fast: maybe we can't make them watch, but we can make them want to watch and we could make it easier for them to watch. I'm talking about enabling commercial-skipping, not trying to fight it.

It's not really the creative side that needs to be sold on a change: smart creatives and clients already get that commercials must be made more appealing and rewarding to watch. What needs to be fixed now is the mechanics  and our attitude on the media side.

With or without TiVo, people find it much easier to avoid all commercials at once, so that even good commercials are ignored simply because they follow bad ones. But what if we revise the model to combine the opportunity for a TV commercial to attract attention, with the ability to easily choose whether or not to view each one? DVR technology might actually make this kind of selection practical for the first time.

Here's my idea, which should not be difficult to accomplish by having TiVo tweak the existing system: Make it possible for the viewer, by touching a button, to have the DVR skip instantly to the end of each commercial at any time during it, regardless of length, and start to view the next one from the beginning at normal speed. Putting up a billboard/title slide ahead of each spot is one way to go, but since the element of surprise is key to the entertainment value of many spots and their ability to hook the viewer, that would not be as practical.

Some might wonder if this isn't a lot of effort for the person with the remote. It is no more than fast-forwarding, actually. The experienced TiVo user is already accustomed to being a more active participant in program viewing. Now we would extend this interactive, choice-based experience to reviewing a set of commercials instead of fleeing from them. While this an opt-out model (in contrast to showcases, which are completely opt-in), the viewer will have more control than when dealing with a continuous pod, and therefore should feel more positive.

But to make this work, everyone will have to agree to face reality. Advertisers, agencies, and networks must be willing to abandon the unreasonable position that everyone should watch every commercial every time it's put in front of them. It's time to trade in the empty hope that somehow they can be forced to do so, for the more common-sense possibility that people will choose to watch the commercials meant for them, if we make it convenient. Of course it will be a big help when measurement gets to the point of proving that this is effective. Meanwhile, isn't this better than the alternative?

While not a permanent solution to the challenges new technology is throwing our way, it could be the right one to get us through the transition. This is just the beginning of a protracted period of change in the TV content and advertising delivery models. When it ends, spots in pods may be gone, or there may just be fewer of them. Product placement will certainly continue and true sponsorship could be revitalized. More likely, as TV delivery breaks out of the strictures of real-time scheduling, we will see more of a hybrid form a mini-program of five minutes or so that is built to deliver a commercial message but is entertaining and buzz-worthy.


Cece Forrester is a media planner in Chicago.