Its no secret that the proliferation of services like TiVo has changed the way viewers access and digest television.
As a response to this still-evolving trend, TiVo has announced that its formed the Interactive Direct Response Advertising Group, an entity that aims not only to help the drtv community fully understand the challenges of advertising in the age of DVR, but, more importantly, to offer real and viable alternative advertising solutions to the DR community.
In a press release, the company acknowledged what many of us already know: TiVo and DVRs lessen the need to channel surf, thus potentially lowering viewership for infomercials and other direct response television advertisements. (We know that many, if not most, viewers fast-forward through commercials.)
Relevant solutions?
Whats positive about the formation of this group is that it promises to find and present valuable, timely and workable (in other words, real) solutions for the portions of the direct response market that are impacted by this growing trend.
The DR communitys goal vis-a-vis TiVo and DVR is to relate to customers directly from the remote control. One proposed solution includes TiVos Interactive Advertising Platform which allows viewers to use their remote controls to click on tags that appear over television commercials in the Ad Showcase area if and when they want to request additional information or view special offers.
For infomercial advertisers, this change in approach presents a unique opportunity to create customized, easily-trackable and actionable offers specifically for the TiVo viewer.