Implications of Fast Forward Ads
Shelly Palmer, Chairman of the New York Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Advanced Media committe, has several thought experiments (via unmediated) up on his blog:
You're watching your favorite show on your PVR equipped television set. You press the pause button and a series of commercials start playing ... who should get the money?
This discussion stems from TiVo displaying ads during fast forward, which as I understand it will only display ads from the company whose ad is being fast forwarded through.
The continuation of this line of thought is the possibility of a company putting their ads over their competitor's fast forwarded ads, which is troubling due to evidence showing PVR users who fast forward through ads have higher ad recall rates. From Shelly Palmer again:
You are probably thinking that all of these scenarios are impossible and, even if they aren't, they're illegal. Wrong on both counts. This is totally possible, it will start happening everywhere very, very soon and the copyright laws are a bit murky since this technology was not contemplated when they were penned.
What this means is that if it starts happening, we could see more anti-PVR legislation coming down the pipeline.
ReplayTV used to do ads when paused. But it was early on and they just didn't have the user base to really interest advertisers. I don't see a problem in this case, the DVR vendor should be able to sell the advertising. It isn't being show in place of, or on top of, the provider's content. I don't think it is any different from ads in the DVR's UI, etc.
As for the pop-up ads while in FF, there is already legal precedent from the web. Generating pop-up ads that appear over another website was struck down by the courts. There were companies using adware to pop their own pop-ups ocer the ads on a page, so the user would see the 3rd party ads and not the ads from the page. I don't see how that's different from placing a 3rd party ad over another ad on a DVR during playback. While someone may try it, I fully expect them to lose the inevitable lawsuit.
Posted by: MegaZone | December 05, 2004 at 08:29 AM
TiVo putting its own ads in place of those used to pay for the show is not all that different from the spyware scum Claria/Gator who hide ads on websites with their own.
Posted by: Fazal Majid | December 05, 2004 at 02:04 PM
I couldn't get any bites when I pointed this out on slashdot...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=130006&cid=10844493
Posted by: barky81 | December 06, 2004 at 11:14 AM
TiVo users, prepare to be called a felon!
Posted by: KirbyMeister | December 10, 2004 at 12:09 PM