Channel Surfing: They're watching what you're watching...

On Tuesday, Google announced an arrangement with TiVo whereby they will be gathering and sharing information on TiVo viewing behaviour as it relates to advertising. The upshot is that TiVo will be sharing information on which adverts people are watching and which ones they're fast forwarding through. According to TiVo, the information gathered will be "totally anonymous". In other words, they're interested in and passing on which adverts are capturing people's interest in terms of type, time, etc, but not who is actually watching them. Do we believe them? Not sure, but I guess we have to take their word for it for now.

When you come right down to it, it's just a rating system. They are able to track when people are pausing, playing and forwarding through programming, so it would naturally be of interest to advertisers to find out whether or not they're created an ad that people are prepared to sit through.

Given that TiVo can monitor viewing habits, over time they can get an indication of which programming slots, networks and ad types are most successful. This could prove to be valuable information for companies investing in TV advertising.

So, what's in it for Google? The idea is that by gaining insights into user viewing data, they can incorporate this learning into their TV advertising auction offering and improve the targeting of their adverts.

The Google TV ad format has been around in the US since 2007 and is not yet available in the UK. So, what does it mean to us on this end of the Atlantic? As with most things Google get up to, whatever they do in the US eventually washes up on our shore, so it's only a matter of time before they broker a similar deal here (if they're not doing so already).

With privacy becoming an ever-increasing concern, it will be interesting to see how this deal is received by TiVo users. The good news is that there is an option to opt-out and prevent TiVo from gathering your viewing habits on your settings, so if you're precious about your information as many of us are, there's a way out.

So, interesting times ahead with a step away from advertisers pushing out ads in the hope they will be seen without having a clear indication of how many viewers they're reaching towards more measureable TV advertising.
Watch this space. I think it’s only a matter of time before TV moves in this direction given the drop in TV ad spending towards more accountable ways of reaching audiences.

-    Eliza Dashwood