It was announced yesterday that TiVo, the creator of and a leader in television services and advertising solutions for digital video recorders (DVRs) and Google, the preeminent player in online search and analytics, are teaming up to track TV ads.
The way this will work is that Google will integrate TiVo television viewing data into its measurement of audiences for advertisements sold through Google TV Ads platform. This once again expands Google's reach into traditional media tracking and distribution. On the surface this move seems like a very big step, to be able to track the effectiveness of TV ads across viewers is a very exciting proposition for marketers. However, I wonder if TiVo and Google might be missing the real opportunity here.
As with most partnerships, the devil is always in the details. In this deal, Google TV Ads will be able to draw on anonymous, second-by-second DVR viewing data from TiVo's stand-alone subscribers to substantially enhance the measurement and accountability of ad impressions for inventory sold using the Google TV Ads auction-based system.
Did you catch it? There was one word in the previous paragraph that makes all the difference. Re-read the paragraph above and see if you can spot the missing piece of the puzzle.
It's not the second-by-second DVR viewing, that is very powerful. It's certainly not the fact that you can now measure ad impressions in a more definitive way, which marketers have been asking for for years. So what is it? One simple word that takes this from a monumental announcement, to another interesting partnership. And that one word is ANONYMOUS.
Marketing is changing from a one-to-many mass advertising approach to a one-to-one and many-to-many relationship-focused social approach. This new marketing paradigm relies on marketers building deep one-to-one relationships with consumers and allowing those consumers to interact with each other in an open and dynamic environment. The concept of tapping into TV viewing habits of TiVo is extremely exciting, but the real opportunity is to track those viewers on an individual basis, not anonymously.
Let me give you an example: How excited would you be as a marketer if I could integrate TV viewing habits into your existing database of consumers, allowing you to understand what TV show or ad a consumer saw before going online to purchase your product or sign-up for your contest?
On the flip side, as a consumer, if you could be rewarded for taking action on a particular ad and have your web experience personalized based on your viewing preferences would that be cool?
We are living in a very exciting time where technology advances are forever changing the way we interact with brands, friends, colleagues and family. We have been given control by social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn to create a unique profile, to select our social connections and to determine our own privacy settings. However, we are still limited in our control over more traditional media. There will be a day in the near future where all of our different channels are connected, but we are not quite there yet.
So congrats to TiVo and Google for pushing us forward and recognizing the value of measurement. Hopefully this will be the first of many advances to make traditional media more accountable. However, I think they might be missing the big opportunity.
As always, I welcome your feedback. What do you think of this partnership?
You can view a full news release here
