I Watch Tivo, Tivo Watches Me

I love PVRs. I started with a Dish Network PVR and eventually I switched to DirecTV to get the DirecTivo. I loved them both, though I definitely love the more advanced features on the Tivo (like WishLists, Suggestions).

In the time since I've had some sort of PVR, I basically have watched ... probably less than 20% of the commercials I could have watched. Why even that high? I'm probably being generous. There are times when I'm watching live TV (such as sports, or when I really want to watch something live). Other than that I usually only watch when I see a commercial that I'm skipping that catches my interest.

We know that Nielsen is releasing PVR-based ratings. Now Tivo is starting a research division to monitor us commercial-skippers.

The service is based on an analysis of the second-by-second viewing patterns of a nightly sample of 20,000 TiVo users, whose recorders report back to TiVo on
what was watched and when.

On average, TiVo has found that its users spend nearly half of their television time watching programs recorded earlier. And viewers of those recorded shows skip about 70 percent of the commercials, said Todd Juenger, TiVo's vice president for audience research. Source: IHT

So ... I'd like to know a) who these 20,000 are (if they're randomly selected every night), b) if I'm in that list, since there are over 4 million Tivo users. 70% is probably about right since I was thinking I skipped about 80%. I can see why this type of data would be really handy for networks, as most advertisers assume people skip everything in playback mode. If Tivo can provide enough data to the contrary, it would really be a boon to networks trying to sell ads in the PVR era.

Tags: Tivo, PVR, advertising