TiVo’s growth has stopped, and in fact, its user base is dropping. There’s too much competition in the DVR market from the big cable companies who offer the same service at a lower price bundled with the cable boxes you need to have anyway. So TiVo needs a way to make more money. Selling customer data is always a good way to do that.
Now, to be clear, this data will be anonymous, and TiVo has actually been doing this to some extent for several years. But tomorrow, the company plans to unveil a better challenger to Nielsen, the leader in TV audience data, USA Today reports. This type of data is vital to television advertisers because it dictates their ad sales. And TiVo thinks it can provide better data for more markets by using its 3 million plus subscribers, to dish out data that can be broken down by the second.
TiVo is trying to play up the fact that such data can be useful to not only advertisers, but to television shows themselves. This way, they can see what parts of shows people skip through — so news shows, for example, can better tailor key content. But this is really about the advertisers, who will want to know what ads people are skipping through, and at what times, during what programs. I’ll make this simple: While not all DVR owners may skip through all commercials, I would bet that anyone who took the initiative to buy a TiVo — a separate box that costs a few hundred dollars and requires a subscription fee on top of your cable bill — skips through just about all commercials, period.
This data from TiVo will apparently come from all but the smallest of the 210 television markets. That’s nice, as it’s a lot more than Nielsen, which generally just offers constant in-depth reports for the largest markets. But Nielsen’s data undoubtedly covers a much wider range of the overall population. In fact, that idea led to the most curious line in USA Today’s piece as stated by TiVo’s audience research and measurement general manager, Todd Juenger. He says, that on top of being richer and better educated, TiVo owners tend to be “unfortunately, a little more white” (than the overall population).
Perhaps TiVo should just publish its data directly to Stuff White People Like.
Seriously though, as a former TiVo owner, I feel for the company. It offers a truly great product, but it’s simply hard for most people to justify paying to put yet another box in their increasingly cluttered living rooms — and asking them to pay yet another monthly fee for it. The cable companies DVRs are absolutely dreadful, but they are cheaper, and come in cable boxes.
The company is making some right moves by offering other services, like Netflix Watch Instantly and Amazon’s streaming movie service on its boxes, but it still has to give a reason for users to pay a relatively high monthly fee for the TiVo service. TiVo can sell all the data it wants, but unless it can reverse the trend of subscribers leaving the service behind, none of that will matter.
[photo: flickr/flyinace2000]
I know they can deliver the stats of what shows people are watching and recording, but its funny that the device advertisers complain most about (gives ability to ffwd through ads) is now attempting to sell them the data of such.
The real problem TiVo faces moving forward is that more and more users are turning to the web for on-demand watching, ala hulu and others, and for good reason; There is no monthly cost, There is no hardware needed, There is no need to record a specific show, You can watch from anywhere, etc..
There is more advantage to the advertiser also- You cant skip the ads on hulu, while you can on TiVo.
The only fallback of Net Services is, of course that they dont broadcast to your television (yet) – Unlike TiVo, The cable companies have the power to make TiVo a losing proposition. It can provide every feature TiVo has, and stop the ffwding of ads, no cost, and no hardware aside from the standard box you already have.
If I was TiVo, I would embrace the cable companies and the web as much as possible, and try to deliver a standardized format that the cable companies peddle to you themself as well as building out a “hulu clone” if possible.
Truth be told, they may be to late to the game.
Disclaimer: I bought a TiVo ~2 years ago and only used it for 2 months. Comcast delivered a bundle offer at that point which just smoked what tivo was offering in price, and I didnt mind the missing functionality (if there was any at all). I havent used the TiVo since then, and its quite likely alot has changed
MG, I’ve always seen TIVO as more of software rather than hardware company. Its a fantastic brand, and I’d still rather have it sitting in my living room than any other competitor.
Personally I’m excited to see if they can keep pace with the innovation they started. Time will tell, maybe there’s a fast forward button in the works for that…
and i don’t think I’ve watched a TV commercial in the last three years
This is racist.
EVERYTHING IS RACIST, SEXIST AND HAS RANCID B.O.
Get over yourself.
Well, I think it will be better now. Time and experience will make Tivo be in the competition always.
Allabout TIVO @ http://search.m...amp;q=Tivo#1231
This subject makes me nuts. TiVo has struggled to survive precisely by acquiescing to advertisers and cable companies. Subscriber attrition is the direct result of monopoly local loop content distributors and back-room deals with DVR manufacturers in every major television market.
If I were heading TiVo, it would be my goal to supplant both the incumbent DVR manufacturers and the local loop content distributors by (a) establishing direct content distribution deals with all of the major television networks all distributed P2P via the Internet and (b) charge users $10/month for TiVo, but give them exactly what they want: time-shifted, a la carte access to all television content on their home television sets.
In the meantime, TiVo, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Google, and all of the other video content providers on the Internet need to fight for net neutrality and against bandwidth caps so consumers have such choices.
How is that supposed to help?
Help who, TiVo? Simple – they continue selling TiVo boxes, TiVo software, and TiVo content guide/aggregation services. If their users have unencumbered access to the local loop, then they (and other IPTV companies) have a chance to compete against the local loop monopolies. Ultimately, this is fantastic for consumers because we have more choices as well.
Ankush,
Your idea is definitely out there. A genuinely great one. As another poster said, TiVO is really a software company with a platform and a great brand but losing steam. I for one would pay even more than you suggest. Remains to be seen if TiVO or someone else will take on the tiger.
or: Tivo makes it clear who its customers really are.
“The cable companies DVRs are absolutely dreadful, but they are cheaper, and come in cable boxes.” PCs are cheaper than Macs too – I choose Mac, I choose Tivo.
And yet… Macs still only have ~7-8% market share.
Since the article says that Tivo users are actually dropping, it’s logically to assume that price difference-to-value gap of the Tivo is much larger than the Mac.
Is there any way Tivo could turn this customer data into a larger enough business that the box could become a loss leader?
Tivo could give away the hardware for free/near free, or they could make the software open source, and get the cable companies to adopt it.
“I would bet that anyone who took the initiative to buy a TiVo — a separate box that costs a few hundred dollars and requires a subscription fee on top of your cable bill — skips through just about all commercials, period.”
You would be dead wrong. There have been studies done already that showed most TiVo users do not skip commercials. In fact, most users still watch live tv even if they are recording a particular show.
I’ve been a TiVo customer since October 2007 and I haven’t looked back. I did not have a DVR prior to that, but due to my cable company lying to me and me not fact checking them, I was without my TiVo HD for about a month after moving last year. The HD box the CableCo gave me had a built in DVR, but it was a horrible experience. I wasn’t able to accurately record only new episodes of shows without a TON of hassle, the UI looks like it is from an 8-bit Nintendo, and I can’t stream Netflix, Amazon VOD, or transfer movies ripped from DVD from my computer. The CableCo box can’t suggest shows similar to ones I already record to get even more shows I may like. The CableCo box wasn’t able to offer in depth information on future shows, and I couldn’t set the box to record certain sports teams without having to check and program each and every week. IE, my Wishlist for Arkansas Razorbacks football. The list is endless, really.
The thing with TiVo is it has evolved into much more than just a DVR. With the streaming options now available and the spreading of OTA HD content, you could completely dump your cable and still see all the major network shows. I won’t get into other less legal methods you could use to download content from Discovery, Comedy Central, History Channel, etc and put it on your TiVo.
Amen Marcus, I just got my TIVO this month and I am floored by how awesome it is with streaming video from my PC. I had a Dishnetwork DVR that was nice but TIVO is the Major League and Dish is the JR league. The only time i wish I had cable was to watch sports but I might sign up for cable during football season.
EVEN IF THIS NEW STRATEGY WORKS, IT DOES NOT SOLVE TIVO’S WOES. If the cable companies detect a lucrative business in selling viewer data, they have far larger and more representative customer bases and can easily rejigger their boxes to report viewership at whatever time increments (several may in fact already have this unreported capability).
I have had DirecTv since 1999 and added the Tivo ten one box in 2000. A lot has changed since then ecspecially the “skip” button which would leap ahead 30 seconds at a time. It was then Tivo first felt the wrath of TV from both Broadcasters and Cable Networks.
Quickly Tivo eliminated that type of FF however 3x FF speed is close. Never the less I am one of those loyal Tivo/ DirecTv users who is still waiting for the availabilty of a Tivo /HD DVR for DirecTv .
Why do I wait? Because DirecTv also came out with there own box and DVR services only just recently opening up to Tivo again.
Further proof that “better” like Beta versus VHs, Mac vs PC, and Tivo versus generic DVR does not rule market share. TiVo had to evolve to survive!