TiVo’s new research — a flaw in some logic

According to a New York Times story, TiVo will begin selling data about its users.

The service is based on an analysis of the second-by-second viewing patterns of a nightly sample of 20,000 TiVo users, whose recorders report back to TiVo on what was watched and when.

That’s certainly interesting, but there’s one tidbit in there that struck me as surprising. It has to do with the fact that viewers of TiVoed shows skip about 70 percent of the commercials. (As a TiVo user, I can say that I skip a lot more than that.)

But TiVo’s new research service is aimed at helping advertisers convince people not to skip their commercials. But here’s the odd tidbit:

…one study for a consumer packaged goods company, which [Todd] Juenger [TiVo's vice president for audience research] declined to identify, found that commercials featuring animal characters, when shown on animal-related programs, were skipped less often than usual.

Ah, the article implies, if a commercial is directly related to a show, people might be willing to watch it.

Mais non. The reason, I think, is more obvious. When you’re fast-forwarding through a commercial during an animal show, if the commercial has animals you might think, “Oops, the show’s on” and hit Play.

To find out if that’s the case, TiVo should see when those commercials fall during the break. My bet: They’re toward the end, when a user is expecting the show to start again (because he’s just zipped past three ads). I bet animal commercials that appear at the beginning of the break are just skipped right over.