Please join the discussion and comment here on my latest MediaPost OnlineSpin column, where I chime in on TiVo’s new Audience Research Measurement (ARM) service:
[M]any onlookers – especially in the trade and business press – have framed TiVo’s announcement not only as a service to generate revenues, but a way to coddle up to advertisers, by helping them understand an ad problem it spawned in the first place.
And that’s fine. But the focus on the burning short-term issue of eroding viewership around television advertising has omitted critical dimensions. Ones that could lead to other, perhaps more valuable research applications, around TiVo’s user base.
The reality is that TiVo’s customer base of 4.4 million household subscribers represents a highly biased, yet valuable and elusive sample. As a market researcher who spends long days uncovering trends in online discussions among passionate affinity groups, I view the TiVo customer base as a goldmine of consumer insights that media and marketing execs should drool over. Industry execs should put aside the short-term ad-skipping issues (at least for a few seconds), and embrace this fervent community for all it’s worth!
And the worth comes in a unique audience that can serve as: 1) an early indicator of future television trends; and 3) an audience that is particularly influential and prone to spreading word of mouth. Again, read and comment on the MediaPost blog here.