In Groundbreaking move, NBC to Use TiVo's Viewership Data

As advertisers, media buyers and television executives try to divine a media landscape developing at warp speed, NBC Universal has become the first broadcaster to reach agreement to use TiVo's viewership research and interactive advertising products.

Finally, a full-fledged admission viewers aren't watching commercials as they once did. Those fast-forward buttons on digital video recording devices may be the most popular after hitting "power on."

Stephanie Kang explains in the Wall Street Journal:

"The agreement reflects rising demand in the TV industry for detailed audience viewing information. TiVo, a provider of digital video recorders, about a year ago started offering advertisers second-by-second ratings of programs and commercials based on the viewing habits of its subscribers, as well as other services. Earlier this month, the Alviso, California, company added demographic data about the viewers themselves, such as age, income, marital status and ethnicity."

NBC Universal's agreement with TiVo will give the TV concern's networks, such as NBC, Telemundo and Bravo, as well as its NBC owned-and-operated TV stations, access to TiVo's ratings data.

"Advertisers have been asking us to help them find new ways to make TV advertising more effective," Mike Pilot, president of NBC Universal Sales and Marketing, said "This partnership gives us the data, the research and the tools to try a bunch of new advertising formats and test their performance."

Translation: Viewers are hardly watching ads. We have to do something to justify the exorbitant fees we charge advertisers, especially with the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing just nine months away. How will we get those eyeballs back?

For NBC, a network which wholly underestimated the power of the Internet during the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and drew the worst television ratings in Olympic history in the process, that is an intriguing question indeed.