Web Video Traffic | What About the TiVo Effect? Part One

What’s the TiVo Effect?

Now that we can all time-shift with our television content, one thing advertisers don’t like is the fact that most of the time, people will skip commericals in TiVo. On the one hand, I can’t blame them. After all, they’re the ones footing the bill so I can watch NBC for free.

But what gets lost in this issue is why people skip commercials. (I promise this is relevant to you shortly. Indulge me?)

We skip commercials because:

1. We’re busy – the point of time-shifting is to see more in less time.
2. We’re bored – commercials for certain types of shows Suck.
3. We don’t like being sold to.
4. We find the commercials a useless waste of time for other reasons than boredom.

So now, we’ve got part of TV’s time shift moving to the Internet. I watch almost every show I like online. I have a short story about that in a second.

But first, we’ve got to talk about how, in light of this shift, if we’re going to create ads or traffic drawing content in video format, aren’t we wasting money if people just skip commercials anyway?

Not necessarily.