Another announcement made during my hiatus from blogging, TiVo has expanded their Stop||Watch ratings service. The addition of 17 more cable networks pushes the total to 93 cable and broadcast networks covered by the service, including 16 cable networks not currently covered by the industry. The ratings are tracked from 05:00 until 23:30 each day. See the full release for more details.

Following up on their initial Superbowl ad results TiVo used Stop||Watch to look at the past success of this year’s advertisers - and issued a press release with their analysis, of course. For example, Superbowl top-place advertiser GoDaddy.com had 35% of their primetime ads skipped during 2008. While perennial Superbowl advertiser Coke had 46% of their broadcast primetime spots skipped. I don’t want to recreate the press release here, so check it out if you’re interested in how DVRs impact advertising.

Following the Superbowl, TiVo released their usual summary of ad viewership. The graph to the right (click for larger version) uses TiVo Stop||Watch data to track viewership on a second-by-second basis. When viewers rewind a section and repeat it this is additive and increases the total viewership. Note that most of the spikes during the first half came during advertisements, while in the second half most of the spikes came during the game itself.

TiVo, of course, put out a full press release with all of the details. Former top ad the E-Trade talking baby was dethroned, not even placing in the top ten this year, while GoDaddy.com jumped to the top spot for the first time.

The top ten rated commercials of this year’s game were:

1. GoDaddy.com: “Enhanced?”
2. Bud Light: “Summer to Winter”
3. Careerbuilder.com: “It May Be Time”
4. Doritos: “Crystal Ball”
5. Transformers: “Revenge of the Fallen”
6. Monster.com: “Moose Head”
7. Bud Light: “Man Thrown out the Window”
8. Pepsi: “MacGruber/Pepsuber”
9. Dennys: “Thugs”
10. Coke Zero: “Mr Polamalu”

See the full release for more.

I’ll be catching up on at least some of the press releases and such that came out in the past three months or so while I was on my little hiatus. I thought about just skipping them, but decided I’d rather have a record of them for coverage in the long run.

Back on 1/21/09 TiVo dropped a press release about their Stop||Watch service for the end of 2008. I didn’t find it very surprising - people do a lot of tiemshifting for primetime programs, and even more during sweeps. The latter makes total sense to me - channels cram popular shows into sweeps periods, which creates more conflicts, which makes people even more likely to timeshift content to be able to watch programs that aired simultaneously. During the sweeps weeks in May and October, 54% of primetime content was timeshifted. During the summer months (June-August), timeshifting dropped to 40% - likely due to the dearth of new content.

See the full press release for more data and analysis.

One of the things I missed covering during the week when I was swamped was a press release from TiVo about timeshifting and the series premiers in October. Using data from their Stop||Watch service they made some interesting discoveries. For example, while it had been expected that more people would watch premiers live, in actuality they experienced up to 54% timeshifting. And cable saw a year-over-year increase in viewership.

Six of the seven new network series that premiered in October drew 50% or more of their audience on a timeshifted basis. The highest rated premier, ABC’s Life on Mars, had 52% timeshifted viewing. NBC’s My Own Worst Enemy had 54%, CBS’s Eleventh Hour and NBC’s Kath & Kim both 51%, and CBS’s The Ex List and CW’s Stylista both had 50%. And the news isn’t good for advertisers, as five of the seven premiers had 60% of more of their ads fast-forwarded or skipped, Life On Mars had a 65% skip rate, showing that ratings alone may not be the best measure of ad viewing. Though My Own Worst Enemy and Kath & Kim had the highest skip rates with 67% - not good for NBC.

Todd Juenger, Vice President & General Manager, TiVo Audience Research & Measurement, said, “We would expect to see this level of Timeshifting for an older show with an established fan base, and a new series premier to get most of its viewing Live. The fact that these new series got upwards of 50% of their viewing on a Timeshifted basis indicates that viewers are growing accustomed to recording programs and watching when they want - thereby increasing a program’s total viewership. However, Timeshifting audiences also have the ability to skip commercials, which impacts the efficacy of the ads and the economics of the program, and can have long term effects on how networks evaluate their success going forward.”

There is a lot more data and analysis in the press release, check it out.

TiVo is quintupling the sample size for their Stop||Watch service from 20,000 to 100,000 users. The new sample size of anonymous, second-by-second audience research data is 25 times the sample size of other, panel-base research sources. The larger sample size allows TiVo to provide accurate measurements for cable networks with lower viewership.

As they state in their press release:

The TiVo set-top-box data platform offers significant advantages over traditional panel-based services, including:

* Second-by-second granularity. Enables ratings for each specific commercial.
* National footprint covering all signal sources, including digital cable, analog cable, satellite, and over-the-air.
* Monitoring Live and Timeshifted viewing. Provides visibility into DVR viewing behavior and commercial fast-forwarding.
* Unprecedented 100,000 sample size. Dramatically decreases the margin of error, allowing us to provide stable ratings (both Live and Timeshifted) for networks with viewership too low to be measured by panel-based services.
* Passive Observation. No paid panelists. No obtrusive metering equipment. Everybody just watches TV as usual.

See the full press release for more details on Stop||Watch as well as some of the ratings data it provides.

TiVo today released the results of their Stop||Watch commercial and program rankings for July 2008. The MLB All-Star game dominated the top-watched ads list, most likely because many elected to watch the game live and therefore fast-forwarding the ads was not an option. And Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance? dominated the most watch program list for July, with six of ten slots. Cable networks are strong in time-shifted viewing, with half of the top 10 slots (three for Burn Notice, two for The Closer).

For a break down of the stats and more information, see the full release.

TiVo Wednesday issued a press release announcing their Stop||Watch results for June. The results continue the pattern from past months, with the top rated spots not necessarily being run during the highest rated programs.

TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in advertising solutions and television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), today unveiled the Top Commercial and Program Rankings for June 2008, as viewed by TiVo(R) service subscribers.

“June is always an unusual month in the Broadcast calendar because most programming is re-runs and summer fare,” said Todd Juenger, Vice President & General Manager, TiVo Audience Research & Measurement. “However, there are still a few big network program finales that dominate the ratings, such as the 2-hour finale of Lost, which lead the top commercials for both Total Viewership and Timeshifted Viewership. Interestingly, U.S. Open Final (golf) also placed high in Total Viewership, but is nowhere to be found on the Timeshifted Viewership, as the vast majority of viewing occurred live.”

Juenger continued, “What is particularly impressive is that every commercial in the Top 10 for Timeshifted viewing aired during the Lost season finale — in fact, the top 86 commercials for Timeshifted viewing aired during Lost. The rank order of the specific commercials continues to demonstrate the choices viewers are making about which commercials to watch. The top 5 spots in Timeshifted viewing were all for movies, with the highest spot getting a 7.7 Timeshifted rating. The lowest spot from this Lost episode got a 2.8 Timeshifted rating, approximately 64% lower than the audience of the highest rated spot.”

The full press release has table after table of result data if you’re interested.

The GateWorld blog is reporting on the ratings for the season premier of Stargate Atlantis, ‘Search and Rescue’. While Nielsen reported 1.8 million viewers, giving a 1.3 rating, that’s under their ‘Live + Same Day’ ratings. Under their ‘Live + Seven Day’ ratings, which includes delayed DVR viewings, the numbers jumped to 2.4 million viewers, which would yield a rating of 1.7. This is direct evidence of the difference DVRs make to viewership and ratings, a difference which will only increase as DVR use grows. The industry is facing a massive change in how ratings are measured and ads are sold, and the advertising industry can only resist the use of DVR-based ratings for so long. With services like TiVo’s Stop||Watch able to provide detailed statistics on ad viewing there may be all new methods of advertising sales and ratings measurement yet to come.

TiVo today issued a press release announcing the commercial and program rankings from their Stop||Watch service for May 2008. And, as has been the norm, we see that the top viewed commercials don’t necessarily air during the top ranked programs, running counter to traditional ratings-based ad sales.

“The May data demonstrates that running a commercial during a successful program does not guarantee that people will see it, especially if they are Timeshifting and watching the show later,” said Todd Juenger, Vice President & General Manager, TiVo Audience Research & Measurement. “Grey’s Anatomy had the top four Timeshifted episodes, but only managed to sneak one spot into the Top 10. On the other hand, House didn’t have any episodes in Top 10 Timeshifted viewing, but placed four of the top Timeshifted commercials.”

The press release is full of data, so check it out of you’re interested.