Mutation in Progress: Advertising Apres TiVo

Tuesday October 25, 2005

Every once in a while, a technology comes along punctuating the way marketing gets done: radio, cinema, television, the Web, TiVo. TiVo will cause more advertising mutation than all the others combined. As I tabulated product placements in “The Bourne Supremacy” — last count: 24 — I also wrote down these 10 predictions.

TiVo will all but kill the 30-second television commercial by the end of 2006; debate all you want. It will mutate wildly to survive.
Branding will never die; it will just find safer, more lucrative vehicles. Online, for example. Trends will see costs for television commercial air time decrease rapidly as a result. If everyone is skipping the commercials, who is going to pay full price for that venue? Product placement and online advertising will skyrocket significantly in the next 18 months correlating to increase in TiVo subscriptions — up to 2 million as of Oct. 1, 2004 and a surprising end of the ’04 year spurt.
Major brand owners like Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and General Motors will begin creating technologies in concert with TiVo and others to make their commercials unzappable.
Major advertisers will begin growing product placement practice areas, specializing in embedding products into specific scenes. Right Guard in the opening scene? No problem. As a matter of fact, please welcome RGA’s Brand Theater. Jerry Seinfeld hit the first really successful product placement home runs for General Mills and Kellogg’s. TiVo cannot skip placements within the boundaries of the programming.
Television programming will become much more segmented in its appeal allowing DVR (digital video recorder) data to become more valuable to advertisers. The number of programming options (cable/satellite channels) will increase to commercially cater to every imaginable demographic more effectively. If you are a 22-year-old gay male with a very high-paying job, interested in NASCAR and fashion, check out channel G6709,the NASCAR Fashion Channel, coming soon! The more the merrier for TiVo. Remember, TiVo is there for you when there are more options than time to watch.
TiVo will begin to offer a new collaborative filtering agent such as "People who watched this show also enjoyed Channel G6709’s 45 Most Fashionable NASCAR Drivers."
TiVo backlash will result in brand owners twisting the arms of networks to allow 35-second commercials (longer commercial segments) and more programming that takes commercial-skippers into account. No longer will we have a 2-minute commercial break. It will be 2 minutes and 14 seconds the first time, 1 minute and 49 seconds the second time, 2 minutes and 33 seconds the third and for the cliff-hanger, a bold and daring 4 minutes and 34 seconds.
If you can imagine it being possible, television will begin to offer even more reality programming. It is easier to place products in a natural setting than a situational or choreographed setting.
TiVo can monitor what programming is viewed, if you do not actively opt out of its monitoring system. In the very near future, General Motors will find out what I view and don’t view or skip and begin to build self-learning formulas that can intelligently guess what my family likes via our viewing and recording habits. They will construct my composite: I am a young professional, father of two, married to an artist/designer, who is more likely than not to purchase a minivan in the next 12 months, as opposed to a Dodge Viper. General Motors will also sell a node to Bristol-Myers Squibb, makers of Plavix, a leading heart drug. They’d be interested in knowing that two heart surgery programs were recorded under our roof last month, making it highly likely that there is a heart issue at my address.
Programming will be developed on a more brand-centric basis. Instead of creating a “Friends” spin-off about a charming, lovable and aloof actor, future TV programming may focus on the actor’s weekly interaction with a new Mercedes S Class. It will have to be subtle to succeed, so watch closely. Look for cable and satellite programming providers to offer price relief to those who can paint the most personal demo-, psycho- and topo-graphic portraits of themselves. If I am a single, 22-year-old recent college graduate, male, Bud Light drinker, Banana Republic devotee, Republican, driving an American SUV, early-adopter technophile, who prefers crybaby rock over diet office cubicle rock — and I am willing to share that with my cable/satellite programming provider — the programs will get to me with all the appropriate product placements. Look for infomercials and sitcoms to converge. For instance, imagine a 30-minute sitcom based on the virtues of a Bowflex exercise machine. Lots of exercising and discussion about how funny it is to go grocery shopping immediately after working out.

I can’t wait for the Life TiVo. I can set it to record the pompous baristas at my coffee stop; the Wednesday afternoon Marketers Webcast so I can skip past the “history of the Internet” part of every presentation; and most importantly I would like to record the evening’s phone calls from my mom who is convinced I need $2 drugstore multivitamins, magnets in my pillowcase and vinegar on my scalp to arrest hair loss. Zap.