In an attempt to shore up relationships with an industry that considers them an enemy, TiVo has announced their intention to market a new advertising service dubbed Video-to-Video. As TiVo users are fast-forwarding through commericals, icons relating to the products being advertised would appear, allowing those that are interested to watch a special pre-loaded three-minute advertisement with more information. Rather than wholly handle this service themselves, TiVo hopes to license the technology to advertisers, although it’s not clear that Video-to-Video would find its way to other PVR devices.
There are more than a few problems with the idea. First is TiVo’s relatively small installed base of around 1.3 million users; Second is the fact that the three-minute clips would be taking up space on users’ already too-small TiVo hard drives (TiVo already reserves space on the hard drives for ads, but it is implied that more space might be required); Lastly, not everyone is convinced that anyone would watch the ads anyway, especially if they are already fast-forwarding through them to begin with.
What we have here is TiVo throwing a bone to the advertising world, hoping to repair some of the damage to traditional advertising which their device helped inflict (and making a little cash to boot, of course).
Clearly, the real solution to this dilemma will involve some sort of Digital Rights Management and mandatory product knowledge testing.
