PurePVR

Yesterday quite a few places carried the news that TiVo was launching a new service dubbed Product Watch. The whole point of this service is to allow users to watch commercials on demand, which seems kind of odd considering a lot of PVR / DVR users seem to use their devices primarily to skip commercials. With all of this talk recently about PVR / DVR users skipping commercials, where does that leave the TV advertising industry? According to some analysts, it leaves them with a lot less revenue. So this new ‘feature’ from TiVo seems a little different, to say the least.

I can’t help but wonder if Product Watch is just the beginning of a new advertising model. Think about it. First we are hearing all of this news that the TV advertising industry is being smacked around left right and center, and now we have a way to watch commercials on demand.

The point I am trying to make is what if you were ‘rewarded’ for watching these commercials? Say for every 10 you watch, you get $X off your next monthly bill? What if there was a new basic TiVo package which had a higher base price, kept track of how many commercials you actually watched and then lowered your monthly charges for every commercial that you watched. In a model like this TV advertisers would be more likely to have their commercials seen if there is a direct benefit to subscribers. Other possible incentives might involve keeping the same base prices that TiVo currently has, but for every X commercials you get a free movie rental (whether it be through Blockbuster, Netflix, etc.).

This of course is all just a wild thought that hasn’t been deeply analyzed, but I can’t help but wonder if it is related to TiVo’s newest feature.

Technorati Tags: PVR, DVR, TiVo, Product+Watch