NBC Universal, TiVo team up on new advertising products
10:54 AM EST November 27, 2007
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- NBC Universal's television networks and stations will offer advertisers a TiVo product that lets viewers get more information about their products and then return to the part of a program that they were last watching, even if the show is being viewed on a digital video recorder.
Under the terms of a new multi-year agreement between NBC Universal and TiVo , NBC outlets will be able to sell TiVo's "Interactive Tags" to advertisers. The companies will also work together to develop other advertising products and will share revenue "where appropriate," they said in a statement Tuesday.
Also as part of the deal, NBC Universal's networks and stations will subscribe to TiVo's StopWatch second-by-second commercial ratings service, which tracks how many viewers see the commercials that air during a program, including DVR viewers.
StopWatch competes with a Nielsen Media Research metric called "Commercial +3," or "C3," which measures how many DVR users watch commercials up to three days after a show first airs.
Across the U.S., an increasing number of viewers now watch television shows days after the first airing using their DVRs, which allow users to easily record programs onto a computer hard drive rather than a video cassette or other comparable medium.
For a few years now, television executives have worried that viewers would be unlikely to sit through commercials in a DVR environment, since it is so simple to fast-forward past the ads. However, data show that some members of the audience do pause, even while skipping, to watch some commercials, and the industry is trying to get a handle on what makes a viewer stop, and for how long.
TiVo shares were up 5.4% at $5.90 in morning trading Tuesday. NBC Universal parent General Electric was up 1.3% at $37.22. |
