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Tivo ads in the wild?

Last fall TiVo users (myself included) raised a bit of a ruckus over the reported beta test feature of ads superimposed and added by TiVo when you hit fast forward. I'm still not sure what became of that planned feature, but Jeff Sprankle wrote in with a report of something similar happening on his TiVo:

This morning, I started watching Ghostbusters 2 on Comedy Central and, as I always do, paused it for a while so I could FF through commercials.  At the first commercial, I used my trusty FF button only to see an ad for The Interpreter smack dab in the middle of the screen.  Seems Tivo has started placing ads on your TV when you FF or RW live TV.  To me, this is quite obnoxious because it takes up most of the TV screen!

There was no new message about a code update so this seems like a sneaky little add-on.  Looks like I'm going to have to send that letter to Mike Ramsey that I wrote when I first heard rumors about this!

Without some photos and screenshots, it's tough to tell if this is an isolated incident or the start of the feature getting out to users. Some folks on the TiVo Community boards are reporting the same thing, so I'll keep an eye out for any screenshots of this feature in action. Until then, consider it unverified, but I await anyone experiencing it to post a photo of it as proof.

by Matt Haughey March 26, 2005 in TiVo

Comments

You might tell Jeff not to bother sending anything to Mike Ramsey, since he won't be the CEO much longer. Maybe if Jeff kept up with TiVo news rather than all the conspiracy theories, he'd be more up to date.

Posted by: Kyle Johnson at Mar 27, 2005 5:18:35 AM

I continue not to understand the outrage over this change if it happens. To quote from a post I made back in November:

"What is the big deal here? It's not like the screen goes blank while you fast forward now. You see everything you're trying to skip, and you tune it out if you're really uninterested. I don't get why this battle is worth fighting.

TiVo acolytes like me know TiVo (and its competitors) have some serious issues dealing with content providers and advertisers. If you care about your TiVo and you want the company behind it to stay in business, then you have to realize that they need us, but they also need advertisers and content providers. They make money off those stupid special feature things that I never look at. They are working on other deals that include cooperation with content providers and advertisers. They will not stay alive forever only on hardware sales and monthly service fees. Yes, in this case, they are appeasing their corporate customers, over their individual customers. But, I just don't see it as being exceedingly invasive."

Posted by: Elisa Camahort at Mar 27, 2005 8:07:00 AM

Well, the reports seem to say that it obscures much of the screen. In my opinion, that degrades the experience, since I frequently stop fast forwarding if there's an interesting looking commercial. If the whole thing is obscured, that makes it much harder to do.

Still, I await final judgement until I see just how good/bad this feature looks to users.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Mar 27, 2005 8:12:46 AM

Ah, I see your point. I've heard most complaints being focused on being "forced" to watch something when they're trying to *avoid* looking at the ads.

You're like my S.O. who actually drives me crazy stopping to look at commercials all the time.

Posted by: Elisa Camahort at Mar 27, 2005 8:41:32 AM

This is an update since I suggested the original post: about an hour after I sent in the post, the ads on my Tivo stopped. I haven't been able to get them to reappear since so I could snap a picture. This must have been another test of some sort.

Regarding the larger issue, here's my $.02. This ad that appeared on my screen was large. It was completely opaque and only allowed for about 2.5" on each side of the ad for live TV on my 32" television. If the ad was smaller or maybe just a banner (like I have read in other forum posts), that wouldn't have been nearly as bad. This ad, however, made it almost impossible to see what was going on behind the ad.

If / when this happens again, I will snap a shot of it and post it here.

Posted by: Jeff Sprankle at Mar 27, 2005 8:56:47 AM

It's not an isolated incident. I also recorded Ghost Busters 2 on Comedy Central and each time I fast forwarded or rewound, a big ad (for what I'm not sure) popped up in the middle of the TV and took over about 70% of the screen.

Ben

Posted by: Benjamin at Mar 27, 2005 12:54:50 PM

I would geuss deploymnet of such a feature would depend in large part on someone actually bying the ad space unless TIVO is going to advertise itself

Posted by: MB at Mar 27, 2005 2:36:02 PM

I saw the this Ad yesterday and was very upset. It appeared both while FF and RW. I was so upset I set emails to http://www.tivo.com/5.9.asp all the contacts in the Media, Investors, and Advertising section. The Ad made it difficult to find the spot in the movie I wanted to replay. All I remember about the Ad was Sean Penn face was on it (I don;t really like him either.)

Subj: You have got to be kidding me....
I was just watching live tv and tried to rewind it to a part I didn’t hear clearly. When I as it rewound in the middle of the screen A GIANT AD POPS UP!!! I thought something was wrong so I pressed play and in real time the AD was gone. So I tried to rewind live TV again and the same thing happened! Both forward and backwards! Ads are one of the biggest reasons we have TIVO. Tivo is a service I PAID FOR. As with network TV it is free because ADs pay for it to be free. You can’t take my money and then expose me to Ads!!! I am going to alert my TIVO friends. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!!!

Posted by: Adam at Mar 27, 2005 4:29:52 PM

I rather hope everyone this bothers so much stops using TiVo - then the complaints about it may go away. Because I'd lay good money down that the ads won't be going away.

As for the code update - the code was in 7.1. So there doesn't need to be any new update for this.

Posted by: MegaZone at Mar 27, 2005 7:01:26 PM

Damn Adam, Get a grip.

Posted by: Schmendrick at Mar 27, 2005 7:09:51 PM

Shouldn't using the 30-second skip instead of FF take care of this?

Posted by: David F at Mar 27, 2005 7:30:15 PM

I'm curious about David F's post just above. I now pretty much exclusively use the 30-sec skip hack (which although some have reported doesn't work with 7.1+, I've had no problem) instead of FF. It's not perfect, but that's not really my point. The ads don't pop up for that, do they? Wouldn't be much point in flashing the ad for 1/20 second.

Ben: if you can't even remember what the ads are for, then that doesn't bode well for TiVo making much money off of them. That post is probably the most convincing during this whole discussion to do away with the pop-up ads.

Posted by: Jason Coleman at Mar 27, 2005 8:07:21 PM

"I rather hope everyone this bothers so much stops using TiVo - then the complaints about it may go away. Because I'd lay good money down that the ads won't be going away."

I agree. This is TiVo's future "gold mine", once they figure out how to do it right.

In reality, this will probably follow past "the sky is falling" reactions - everyone remember how the Yellow Star meant the "end of TiVo as we know it"? Who complains about the Yellow Star ads anymore?

TiVo will fix whatever bugs or problems there are in the "popup" ads, everyone will get used to it, a very tiny number of people might get rid of their TiVos, but the vast majority of complainers won't.

The "Chicken Littles" will get used to it, until they have something new to complain about; then, and only then, will they be happy again.

Posted by: David Deane at Mar 27, 2005 9:42:44 PM

"This is TiVo's future "gold mine", once they figure out how to do it right."

I think that's the key that seems to be missed. The reports I heard from the original beta test and these new reports sound like they're doing them wrong. Putting a giant graphic that obscures the screen makes it harder to see what's going on behind it.

Everyone that has a national brand cable TV box probably sees lots of little ads in their interface. I remember when I had comcast, there was a big TV guide logo and various small logos for show promos when I looked at the guide or dug in for show information. Those are slightly annoying, but pretty much unobtrusive.

The point I'm trying to make again and again here is that while TiVo is within its rights to take on additional advertising, they have to respect the user as well as the advertisers. I'm hoping the final version of these ads in whatever form they take end up taking up small corners of the screen and aren't too jarring.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Mar 28, 2005 6:26:56 AM

I'll echo a few other comments regarding the size of the ad: if 70+% of the screen is obscured by an ad, doesn't that make FF and REW significantly less useful? If I can't see what I'm FF/REWing through, I won't know when to stop. Yes, I use the 30-sec skip for ads. But when I'm watching sports that have short, variable lengths of time between the televised action -- football and golf, mostly -- I need to see what's on screen for the FF/REW and "jump back" to be useful to me.

Posted by: Krybo Amgine at Mar 28, 2005 8:18:50 AM

I know the ad I saw was VERY obtrusive. Obviously, many others were bothered by this also. I consider this to be a big deal for many reasons. First, I pay for the service to be able to skip ads...that's one of the features that drew me to Tivo in the first place. With that feature gone, or degraded, Tivo becomes less attractive. Second, the size of the ad makes FF and RW much less useful, as I and many others mentioned above.

Now, I'm not going to take my Tivo to the trashcan anytime soon but when something you love so much degrades, it causes some concern. To all those people that say "Why are you so upset...don't worry about it", that fine for them. If they want a huge ad everytime they FF or RW, that's fine but I don't want one.

Hopefully, some of you are right when you said that Tivo will redesign these to make them much less obtrusive. A banner ad at the top of the screen, for example, would be much less bothersome and I probably wouldn't even care. However, if these large ads are the way Tivo decided to use advertising, I have a problem with that.

Posted by: Jeff Sprankle at Mar 28, 2005 8:43:03 AM

I'm not sure how I should feel about this I actually haven't seen the ads. My two cents on this is TiVo wants to show ads and *truly* believes they can make more money on ad revenue than on subscriptions it might make an interesting business model. Ad supported service if it works can bring more customers to the TiVo service.

I might not even mind watching an ad or two if it was targeted to me.

Joe Cotellese
www.coolcrap.org

Posted by: Joe Cotellese at Mar 28, 2005 10:07:10 AM

Feh. Tivo's future is in giving real customers want they want and to stop bending over and offering their ass every single time and advertiser whispers in their ear.

It's a ton of work but but it's the time to switch 100% to mythtv, tivo has been trying to sell out for years but now they are getting serious about it. I'll be damed if I'm going to PAY for my cable/Sat and PAY to Tivo to bombard me with their adds.

Anyone excusing this is simple a loyal moron who is failing to play the tape to the end and understand where this is trully going and what it will change the DVR experence into. Hey you must watch comercials or your just stealing TV right? *sigh*.

Posted by: Griffon at Mar 28, 2005 10:21:41 AM

I think the reactions to TiVo's advertising tests are relevant to the discussion about the Comcast merger. I think you can get a glimpse of what happens when TiVo puts the interests of advertisers over that of consumers. On the whole, it doesn't sound like a positive response. (I also like how nobody seems to know what the ad is about anyway. I think the ads get better recall moving by at 150 fps than with a large obtrusive banner.)

Posted by: Alex Rowland at Mar 28, 2005 11:18:58 AM

After these and any other more intrusive ads take hold, perhaps TiVo will follow the lead of many web sites and offer a "premium" subscription service that removes all of the intrusive adds.

Posted by: Derek G at Mar 28, 2005 11:50:54 AM

FWIW someone posted a few screen shots of the ad in action in a different tivo community forum thread.

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=2724391&&#post2724391

although hopefully it's a bug, it seems some people have had the commercial overly show up on the actual content when RW/FFing not just the commercial segments... I've logged in and set my tivo to tape a few comedy central shows for me to try out when I get home...

rampy

Posted by: rampy at Mar 28, 2005 12:19:54 PM

An add for the new nicole kidman movie popped up during 24. Took a second to realize what was going on. Only slightly annoying.

Posted by: Ryan Schroeder at Mar 28, 2005 7:03:51 PM

Hey Guys,

I'm watching 24 right now and that damn "Interpreter" ad is everywhere. It obscures about 80% of the screen during FF and RW whether it's during commercials or during the actual show.

It makes it very difficult to find where you need to to stop after the commercials are over. What's worse is that the ad plays over the show if you have to RW or FF.

This is crap. If TiVo is going to do this, then they need to cut the subscription fees. After we've paid for the box and a hunk of change for the service I shouldn't have to have my overall viewing experience hindered by this crap. At least make the ad small and across the top or bottom so I can still enjoy my show and scan the commercials for promos and items I actually want to watch. If you ask me, they are hurting advertisers more then helping them!

...bu then again, TiVo has become less and less responsive to their owners. They seem to care less and less what we think. The customer service has gone downhill and I have gone from being one of those "100% happy" TiVo users who has probably sold at least 20 boxes thanx to my recommendations to friends and family to a disgruntled TiVo owner.

Am I alone?

Posted by: NaviGATR at Mar 28, 2005 7:04:34 PM

One just popped up on my TiVo while I was FF through commercials in 24 which was still live.

It was in the center of the screen but I wouldn't call it 70%.

Posted by: Christopher at Mar 28, 2005 7:07:30 PM

The ad that showed up on screen during '24' was for the Sean Penn movie "The Interpreter". At first, there was just a Tivo-generated star that said "press thumbs up" (much like the ones that show up during regular commercials, except with a star instead of a thumb.) When I rewound to get another look at the star, a big Interpreter shot filled most of the screen. It went away as soon as I resumed normal speed.

Posted by: adm at Mar 28, 2005 7:32:50 PM

For those that are interested I've posted a picture from the add from 24

http://gadgetpile.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Don Olsen at Mar 28, 2005 10:14:46 PM

As a side note it looks like these adds may only be played during the actual time the show is running. When I played back the same episode of 24 on FF none of the adds appeared. So only those that start watching a show at 15 after, so as to be able to FF through commercials, may have to suffer. This might also explain why some people haven't seen this.

Posted by: Don Olsen at Mar 28, 2005 10:49:07 PM

I have yet to see these. Are DirecTiVos affected? If not, it may be the one good thing that's happened over the past 3 years :)

Posted by: sMoRTy71 at Mar 29, 2005 4:15:07 AM

It's wierd though, after finishing 24 last night I was FF and RR around to look at to ad. Hard to tell but it seemed like the first time it appeared was when the actual spot for the "Interpreter" ran. Also it stopped showing up after a while and wouldn't come back.

Posted by: Ryan Schroeder at Mar 29, 2005 4:32:08 AM

Why does it feel like TiVo is running a beta test with these ads on a random group of public users? Shouldnt these "bugs" have been fully worked out during beta testing?

Posted by: New York at Mar 29, 2005 5:32:12 AM

TiVo's future is giving "real customers" what they want... I don't know what a "real customer" is vs a "fake customer" but obviously that is not the case. The "real customer" base is not supplying enough revenue to TiVo to become profitable. While TiVo has become synonymous with PVR fact is that the number of installed TiVos out there is a relatively small percentage of the customer base of any of the large cable companies. We are a loud bunch, but we are, relatively speaking, a very small populace. Take into account the number fo boxes that are "lifetime subbed" and TiVo's monthly subscription revenue is not nearly as high as many of would estimate.

"TiVo has become less and less responsive to their owners"... No they haven't... It's no worse or better than it has been in the past. What has happened is the euphoria has long since worn off and you're much more critical of practices and approaches now. Many of the things you complain about today you likely would have blown off if they had occurred four or five years ago when you first "went TiVo".

Posted by: InDenial at Mar 29, 2005 8:15:46 AM

This explains what Tivo is doing
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5644197.html
Sounds like some bugs in their test program--if it's just a small tag, as it seems it should be, then I suspect few will be too upset. We'll see

Posted by: john at Mar 29, 2005 10:45:46 AM

I don't know if anyone else is having the same trouble, but since a few days ago my 30 second skip no longer works. I can proram it, and then use it - but the next recorded show I watch it's gone again... ??? WTF? I guess its not too bad to reset it every show - just annoying... Anyone else having the same thing? Also - I haven't seen the ads, but I rarely (like - never) watch live TV - just my recorded shows.

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