After years of helping TV viewers skip past ads, TiVo unveils an initiative Wednesday that will enable Madison Avenue to measure the damage. And, in the process, it is taking on longtime TV viewer tracker Nielsen Media Research in trying to quantify the impact of TV commercials.
The digital video recorder pioneer has created a division, TiVo Audience Research and Measurement, that will compile detailed data showing how many TiVo users zap particular ads, including the exact second when they jump.
“This is the hottest issue in television marketing,” says TiVo CEO Tom Rogers.
Initial reports will show ad-viewing patterns of a random sample of 20,000 of its more than 4.4 million DVRs.
