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With New User Tracking Service, TiVo Guns for Nielsen

by Lee Bains on April 20, 2009 at 03:16 PM

Today, TiVo will begin selling more than the opportunity to watch your favorite shows when it's more convenient. According to USA Today, the company is trying to hawk viewer information to TV stations and advertisers alike with its fledgling 'Stop/Watch Local Markets' program, hoping to give tracking giant Nielsen a run for its money.

Able to monitor viewers' behavior by the second, TiVo will not only be able to report what viewers are watching at any given moment, but also when the largest number are tuned in and when they fast-forward through recorded programs. While Nielsen's rating system does not offer the same information, the longtime ratings titan does boast a much larger demographic that aims to represent all U.S. TV-watching households. With its scope admittedly limited to households with DVRs, TiVo's analysis within the Stop/Watch Local Markets program would be limited to the company's 3.3 million subscribers, a number that has decreased by 25-percent over the past two years. Fortunately for TiVo's remaining subscribers who would rather not be lumped into these statistics, TiVo does offer the opportunity to abstain from the program on its Web site.

While TiVo might be on to something with its new venture, we do find it interesting that the company innovative enough to become a verb ("I haven't watched it yet, but I TiVo'ed it.") has now lost so much business to cable companies' frequently lesser DVRs. Maybe, though, this means that we'll be fortunate enough to see other hyped-up, linguistically invasive companies ("He Facebook friended me, even after I talked smack about him in a tweet.") take a small step out of the spotlight. [From: USA Today]

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Tags: business, dvr, nielsen, tivo, top, tv ratings, TvRatings

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