The post seems designed to cast further doubt on the value of Nielsen’s C3 (Live+3 days) data, the mainstay of today’s ad buying. It does this by raising questions seemingly designed to generate a little fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the mind of the reader:

Changing Channels In 2008, according to Nielsen, the average TV household received 130.1 channels. Today, a midrange DirecTV package includes 225+ channels. Is the C3 metric and the Nielsen sample size equipped to handle this increased fragmentation?

Tablet Time In April of 2010 the first iPad was released and second screen viewing began to accelerate at a rapid pace. In fact, according to a recent study commissioned by Viacom, tablets have surpassed computers for full length TV show viewing and now account for 15% of all viewing. The industry doesn’t currently have a viable way to measure data for second screen viewing so where is it going to come from in the future? Nielsen’s cross-platform measurement plan cuts their NTI sample in half leaving approximately ten thousand homes to interpret what is occurring on the second screen, hardly a robust sample size.

DVR Domination And then there’s the DVR: According to a number of research studies, DVR penetration has more than doubled since 2007, going from 22% to over 45% today. The C3 metric was produced in an attempt to assuage the affect DVRs had on viewing in the home. C3 measures average viewership during the specific times when commercials are aired on a minute-by-minute basis. There are a couple of flaws in this formula, the most prevalent of which is minute-by-minute analysis. If a commercial break during Modern Family begins at 9:14:46, as I understand it, 9:14 is included in the C3 calculation. Bucketing this way can cause data which doesn’t paint the real picture of viewing. Let me show you what I mean.

He then goes on to highlight the increased accuracy of TiVo’s own Stop||Watch service. And they continue to pick on poor Modern Family as their example show:

At TiVo, our Stop||Watch rating service tracks viewing on a second-by-second basis and when analyzing a top rated show such as Modern Family, the time-shifted ratings in DVR homes can drop as much as 60% over a 14-second interval in the moments after a commercial break begins. 60%! Including those 46 seconds into the C3 calculation inflates the viewership levels for almost half of all U.S. homes. There are other factors that further complicate the equation – pod busters, commercial-program integrated spots, network promos, etc. – none of which were contemplated in the construction of the C3 metric.

TiVo really seems to be gunning hard for Nielsen’s spot as the ratings provider used as the basis for ad buying. Of course, they do seem to have a superior offering that provides much more accurate data to ad buyers.

Via MediaBizBloggers.

In January, during CES, they put out a press release about OTT content and recorded TV overtaking Live TV viewing. They reported that, on web-connected units, live viewing was only 38%. And among users who use OTT services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Instant Video it is only 27%. The source for this data? Stop||Watch. That’s a bit of indirect marketing – “Look at what we can do with this data. Imagine what you could do with it.”

Last month they made a direct pitch when they announced the launch of ‘Next Day’ data services in Stop||Watch. Of course, they used the Academy Awards as a ‘hook’ for the announcement, as they released it the next morning and included viewing data from the previous night’s broadcast. Which is a clever marketing move as the popular press doesn’t care about the next day data service, but it got a lot of press because of the Academy Award data that was included.

Last month also saw the announcement of the deal with AT&T AdWorks to incorporate their data into Stop||Watch. Last week we had CEO Tom Rogers’ letter to the editor in The New York Times. And while he never mentioned Stop||Watch by name, it was obviously a stealth pitch for the service.

But that’s not all, over the past few weeks TiVo bloggers at MediaBizBloggers.com have really been beating the drum. MediaBizBloggers’ target audience is made up of industry members, not the general public, so the posts are tailored accordingly. Back on March 5, Jonathan Steuer, TiVo’s Vice President, Audience Research & Measurement, blogged in response to the same NYTimes article on the Modern Family ratings that Tom Rogers’ letter was in response to. It basically says the same thing Rogers said, only in much more detail with the data and graphs to back it up. All of it pulled from Stop||Watch, of course.

Then on Monday Greg DePalma, TiVo’s Vice President of Audience Insights, blogged about marketing executives basing their ad buys on gut feeling and historic behavior patterns instead of hard data. He never mentions Stop||Watch by name, but he does call out“TiVo and other STB data” in making the argument that buying based on the data produces better results for advertisers.

On Wednesday Alex Petrilli, senior manager of audience research at TiVo, blogged a very tongue in cheek post entitled“All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Nielsen“. The whole post is a little bit snarky in a fun way, relating stories about lessons he’s learned via the examples set by others. As in, what not to do so you don’t end up like them after they screw the pooch, as it were.

For example, he snarkily points out how ridiculous Nielsen’s rating system is, in areas such as sample size:

I discovered that 1,200 diaries can accurately represent the viewing of almost seven million people in the San Francisco DMA. Nielsen taught me that 500 household meters will equate to the two million plus households for the same DMA. And when people meters arrived, 800 was the magic number to capture both household and demographic viewership. As far as Nielsen’s NTI sample goes, 21,000 will be sufficient to represent the 114 million U.S. households thank you very much.

He later goes on to, of course, extol the virtues of Stop||Watch:

Thanks Nielsen, lessons learned. Here at TiVo our anonymous daily Stop||Watch sample consists of 350,000 set-top boxes. We also recently signed a licensing deal to incorporate the more than 8 million AT&T U-verse set-top boxes into our system which will significantly increase our sample size. In terms of DVR playback, based on TiVo’s 4th Quarter Stop||Watch data, 44% of all programs viewed were time-shifted. 54.6% on broadcast television and 37.8% on cable. In prime those figures jump to 63.4% for broadcast and 46.5% for cable equating to 56.1% overall. Based on other information I have seen regarding DVR usage, these figures appear more realistic than Nielsen’s 16.7%. But in the end, it is all about sample size, and Nielsen will be the first to tell you they have it covered.

It is nice to see a non-dry tone from a corporate blogger, honestly.

I know there have been other direct and indirect Stop||Watch pitches I’ve encountered, but I think these will suffice. Maybe it is just my unusual travels on the net; I do cover TiVo as a blogger (obviously), so I have various agents scouring the net for TiVo news and I monitor many different sources of TiVo info. But it definitely feels like activity surrounding Stop||Watch has picked up as of late.

End users may wonder what this means for them and really – not much. But services like Stop||Watch are part of TiVo’s diversified business model and success in selling these services is good for TiVo’s overall health. In the longer run, data-based advertising can lead to more meaningful ads. And evidence of problems reaching audiences who time shift can steer advertisers toward TiVo’s related offerings in interactive advertising and on-box promotions.

Lately it feels like TiVo is making a more concerted effort to raise awareness of Stop||Watch among industry decision makers. It has the feeling of an organized marketing push. It is nice to see TiVo being more aggressive in marketing these services. Of course, maybe it is just my skewed perspective.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

Jun 24, 2008 11:36 ET

TiVo Joins With TRA to Provide First of its Kind Audience Research Product

Only Service to combine anonymous viewership, demographics, and purchasing data; moves TRA closer to goal of one million household national sample size

NEW YORK, June 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ:TIVO) , the creator of and a leader in advertising solutions and television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), and TRA, Inc. (http://www.traglobal.com/), developer of the only scalable advertising research system that creates intelligent media data by measuring and reporting true ROI accountability and transparency for advertising spend, today announced an agreement enabling TRA to license and market TiVo® Audience Research Metrics as a bundled offering with TRA’s Media TRAnalytics™.

Through this partnership, TRA will be drawing anonymous viewing data from TiVo’s base of 1.7 million stand-alone subscribers. This will give TRA’s Media TRAnalytics service, the only research service with the ability to correlate household purchasing behavior with media exposure, access to an unprecedented national sample size in order to effectively evaluate ROI of media spend. This agreement will accelerate TRA’s stated goal of having one million households nationwide of anonymous singlesource data (TV viewership associated with household purchase data). The combined data from TRA and TiVo provides the most comprehensive universe of anonymous purchasing data and anonymous viewership data, covering all television signal sources including digital cable, analog cable, satellite, and over-the-air television, in Live and Timeshifted viewing.

TRA has agreements with three MSOs and has been producing anonymous, aggregate reports associating TV viewership with household purchasing data based on cable data since October 2007. TRA intends to expand its use of cable television data and harmonize cable and TiVo data to produce the largest and most representative anonymous sampling of the United States television audience.

David F. Poltrack, Chief Research Officer, CBS Corporation and President of CBS Vision said, “As a TiVo Stop||Watch™ and Media TRAnalytics subscriber, the level of actionable, detailed reporting that each provides is extremely valuable in helping us evaluate TV viewing behavior and the efficacy of our advertiser’s campaigns. By combining forces, TiVo and TRA will essentially be offering the ‘single source’ measurement of television viewing and product purchasing behavior that the marketing community has been asking for since the 1970′s.”

“We are at a pivotal time for the advertising community, as new technologies open new research avenues for the industry to get more in-depth insight into who is viewing which programs and then purchasing products based on advertising,” said Mark Lieberman, CEO and Chairman of TRA Inc. “TRA’s agreement with TiVo is exciting for our company as Media TRAnalytics™ becomes the most advanced media and marketing research solution available on the market today.”

“This partnership is the result of a shared vision for the future of advertising research and an ongoing commitment to help the media industry better understand the effectiveness of ad campaigns,” said Todd Juenger, Vice President & General Manager, TiVo Audience Research & Measurement. “TiVo’s expansive audience behavioral data coupled with TRA’s access to the richest amount of purchase statistics with corresponding demographics creates the most powerful, comprehensive research tool for measuring advertising efficacy and ROI of media spend — bar none. By matching this anonymous data, without using small unreliable panels, advertisers are finally able to connect TV viewing patterns to household purchase behavior and achieve meaningful insight in a way that respects consumer privacy.”

TiVo’s Stop||Watch™ ratings service, introduced in February 2007, is offered via an easily sortable database of ratings for nationally run programs and advertisements from cable and broadcast networks, with data going back to September 2006. The data is derived from a daily, aggregate, anonymous, stratified random sample of 20,000 TiVo units — from which the second-by-second “clickstream” of behavior and viewership is collected and assessed. TRA subscribers who are also Stop||Watch™ subscribers will have access to the total breadth and depth of both services.

The partnership was announced during the Advertising Research Foundation’s Audience Measurement 3.0 conference in New York where Messrs. Juenger and Poltrack are featured speakers.

About TiVo Inc.

Founded in 1997, TiVo (NASDAQ:TIVO) pioneered a brand new category of products with the development of the first commercially available digital video recorder (DVR). Sold through leading consumer electronic retailers and our website, TiVo has developed a brand which resonates boldly with consumers as providing a superior television experience. Through agreements with leading satellite and cable providers, TiVo also integrates its DVR service features into the set-top boxes of mass distributors. TiVo’s DVR functionality and ease of use, with such features as Season Pass™ recordings and WishList® searches and TiVo KidZone, have elevated its popularity among consumers and have created a whole new way for viewers to watch television. With a continued investment in its patented technologies, TiVo is revolutionizing the way consumers watch and access home entertainment. Rapidly becoming the focal point of the digital living room, TiVo’s DVR is at the center of experiencing new forms of content on the TV, such as broadband delivered video, music and photos. With innovative features, such as TiVoToGo™ transfers and online scheduling, TiVo is expanding the notion of consumers experiencing “TiVo, TV your way.®” The TiVo® service is also at the forefront of providing innovative marketing solutions for the television industry, including a unique platform for advertisers and audience research measurement.

TiVo, ‘TiVo, TV your way.’, Season Pass, WishList, TiVoToGo, Stop||Watch, and the TiVo Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of TiVo Inc. or its subsidiaries worldwide. © 2008 TiVo Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

About TRA, Inc.

TRA, Inc. (True ROI Accountability for Media — http://www.traglobal.com/) is a media marketing research company whose proprietary patent pending technology cost effectively matches the ads that people actually receive with the products people actually buy; giving advertisers, agencies, and media transparency, accountable measurement, and return-on-investment for their advertising spend. TRA’s Media TRAnalytics™ 2.0 provides Advertising/Media Exposure (AME), Return on Investment (ROI), Audience Retention (AR), Reach and Frequency (RF), and True Target Index (TTI) reports. TRA’s engine has the ability to analyze viewership data from television digital set boxes (DSTBs) as well as cross-tabulate second-by-second advertising audience data from a significant number of DSTBs with other media touchpoints, household demographics and actual household product purchasing data in the same homes. TRA’s Web-based research reports permit advertisers and agencies to reallocate their advertising, shifting money to advertising that produces higher sales per dollar.

Founded by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Lieberman, an experienced entrepreneur, and advertising industry measurement pioneer Bill Harvey, President and Co-Founder, TRA employs proprietary measurement technologies and proven algorithms developed and refined over a 10-year period. TRA’s founders have been in the media research industry for more than 25 years and have built and run digital media companies in the marketing research, video-on-demand, Internet video and information publishing industries.

In August of 2007, TRA closed its first institutional financing round led by Kodiak Ventures, WPP/Kantar Media Research and unnamed angels. MediaVest, a subsidiary of Paris-based Publicis Groupe, is TRA’s first agency to be using Media TRAnalytics 2.0. TRA’s Board includes John Billock, the former Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of Time Warner Cable, Burt Manning, the former Chief Executive Officer of J. Walter Thompson, Bruce Barnet, the former CEO of Reed Business Information, Chip Meakem, general partner from Kodiak Ventures, and Bill McKenna, the President of KMR, North America.

Source: TiVo Inc.

CONTACT: Whit Clay of Sloane & Company, +1-212-446-1864,
wclay@sloanepr.com, for TiVo Inc.; or Andy Dear of Pan Communications,
+1-978-474-1900, tra@pancomm.com, for TRA, Inc.

Web site: http://www.tivo.com/
http://www.traglobal.com/

“How do you make a TiVo-proof commercial? Everybody wants to know the answer,” says Todd Juenger, vp, general manager of research and measurement at TiVo, which introduced its Stop Watch measurement tool that gives clients access to second-by-second ratings of commercials and programming. Instead of a traditional focus group, the system pools information from the viewing habits of TiVo’s 4 million subscribers.

TiVo studies have shown that the context in which a commercial is surrounded plays a critical role in whether it will be skipped. “It’s like a restaurant,” he says. “Even if you have the world’s finest restaurant, if you are in a crappy location, you’re still not going to get the customers you would get in a good location.”

In some dayparts, direct response does well, in others automotive ads. “It comes back to the environment and the target audience,” he stresses. “It can sometimes be more important than how creative the ad is to begin with. If they are in the market for a home gym, they’ll watch that commercial, even if it’s not what is traditionally thought of as a creative ad.”

I thought the article was interesting overall, as a look into an industry (advertising) I’m only peripherally aware of.

TiVo Inc.(NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in advertising solutions and television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), today announced that Omnicom Media Group has purchased a subscription to TiVo’s Stop||Watch™ ratings service. The Group’s full service media companies, OMD, PHD, and Prometheus Media Services, will use the comprehensive, second-by-second DVR audience behavioral data to help their clients better understand Live and Timeshifted audience viewing habits and the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

The press release certainly not coincidentally timed to lead into TiVo’s quarterly financial conference call this afternoon. See the full release for more.

Through TiVo’s Stop||Watch™ service, which provides the industry’s only second-by-second measurement of program and specific commercial ratings for both live and time-shifted viewing, CBS will have access to the industry’s richest insights into DVR viewing behavior. This partnership will allow CBS to develop and measure new strategies to deliver results for its advertising clients, including learning how to structure pods and interstitials to better keep audience attention during commercial breaks, and develop new and improved promotional strategies for time-shifted viewers to build audiences for its programs.

See the full press release for more details.

TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in advertising solutions and television services for DVRs, today announced that Euro RSCG New York, the North American flagship office of global integrated marketing communications agency Euro RSCG Worldwide and a recognized leader in bringing transformative communications and business strategies to its clients, has subscribed to TiVo’s comprehensive second-by-second content ratings research products.

See the press release for full details.

TiVo Inc.(NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in advertising solutions and television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), today announced that it has signed Carat to a comprehensive audience research agreement. Carat, one of the largest media buying shops and among the fastest growing marketing communications groups worldwide, will utilize TiVo’s unique research services to help its clients better understand the most urgent issue facing advertisers today – the impact of DVRs on viewing behavior and especially fast-forwarding of commercials. In addition to access to DVR viewing behavior, TiVo and Carat will also work together to educate Carat clients on ways to reach the fast forwarding viewer, leveraging TiVo ad solutions.

You can tell TiVo’s financial call is this afternoon – they’ve made new announcements yesterday and today. The subscription gives Carat access to both Stop||Watch and Power||Watch programs. DVR utilization is going nowhere but up and advertisers are getting serious about addressing that market. They have to evolve or die, and that’s good news for TiVo as they’re a leader in this space.

As part of the agreement, NBC Universal will offer advertisers the ability to purchase TiVo’s Interactive Tags in conjunction with other NBC advertising products as a way to enhance their campaigns on NBC broadcast and cable networks and owned TV stations. The tags allow viewers to click on an icon when watching a commercial to obtain more information about that advertiser and then return to the exact place they exited viewing. Tags also provide advertisers with an effective way to reach live, time-shifted or fast-forwarding viewers and to achieve deeper engagement through the opt-in requests for more information. NBC will also be able to offer its advertisers detailed reports on the results of campaigns that include TiVo Interactive Tags. Under the partnership, TiVo and NBC Universal will also work together to develop additional advertising products and will share revenue where appropriate.

Regarding NBC’s subscription to TiVo’s Stop||Watch™ ratings service, Mr. Rogers said, “We are thrilled that NBC is the first network to embrace our Stop||Watch commercial ratings service and can measure audience viewing behavior and ad campaigns on a second-by-second basis, in both Live and Timeshifted viewing contexts. Moreover, NBC can benefit by using the Stop||Watch service to evaluate the effectiveness of various efforts to retain audience during commercial pods.”

NBC Universal will also begin utilizing TiVo Record Tags in its on-air promotions, which enable one-click recordings of NBC programming on any of its broadcast or cable networks when a promotional spot appears for the relevant show. NBC will use the Record Tags to help viewers discover the full breadth of NBC programming and to drive additional viewing.

Since NBCU is an existing institutional investor in TiVo, it isn’t surprising that they would be the first network to enter into this kind of partnership with TiVo. See the press release for more details.