back to article Google eyeballs to track Tivo watchers

Google has inked a deal with digital video recorder (DVR) outfit Tivo that lets the search firm snoop on audience numbers as a way of fueling its TV advertising business. Tivo said the agreement allows the Google TV Ads platform to draw anonymous "second-by-second" DVR viewing data from all Tivo subscribers using standalone …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Look, Advertisers......

    People SUFFER with your "products", I have Sky+ and I normally record everything on "comercial" chanels so I can SKIP the adverts. Hell, if sky offered me an extra button on the remote so I could press it without having to sit and watch the fast forwarded adverts I'd gladly pay an extra tenner a month extra for it.

    Sure, some adverts are cute, some are funny and some can be informative (and some, like that fucking Go compare ad can stick in your mind and drive you to the point where you wouldnt buy insurance from them if they were the last company on earth, I'd rather risk fines and suspension for driving without insurance, but I digress) but, and this is the important bit for Advertising executives - NO ONE CHOOSES TO WATCH ADVERTS!

    I wonder if I can get a grant from the university of stating the bleedin' obvious to research that would undoubtedly show that people with a box full of recorded, comercial programs will skip the adverts 100% of the time!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      simple solution (at least in the U.S.)

      I don't know beans about UK TV offerings, but this works perfectly over here in Yankville.

      1) get a TiVo (genuine article, not just any DVR)

      2) program the "commercial skip" easter egg into your remote

      http://bigmarv.net/how/tivo30secondskip.html

      3) record program(s) of your choice

      4) when playing back said programs and the commercials begin, hit the skip button once per 30-second advert. Back to the show in 3-6 seconds. Ta Daaa!

    2. Alan Edwards
      Thumb Up

      Preset time skip

      You want a Sony DVD Recorder/HD-DVR. It's only got 1 tuner and the software's not brilliant, but it does have a button that skips forward in 30s chunks and back in 5s chunks. If you keep hitting it, the amount it skips with each press increases.

      Takes me about 5s to skip 4 mins-worth of ads.

      TiVo's originally had this too, but I think it got pulled from later boxes.

      Mine's a something-890, but they're all the same apart from the hard disc size.

      Alan.

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