Companies Aim for TiVo-Proof Ads

March 14, 2007 — -- What do you do if you're a television advertiser faced with more than 22 million consumers who can simply skip your ads with the press of a button? If you're TrimSpa, the answer is to make them watch the ads anyway.

Facing a post-Anna Nicole Smith drop in sales, TrimSpa's parent company, Goen Technologies, is looking for a way to expand its bottom line. So in a few weeks, the New Jersey-based company will offer up before-and-after photos of everyday people that will stay on your television screen no matter how many times you might hit the fast-forward button on your DVR remote.

DVRs -- digital video recorders -- are popular with consumers who are able to record their favorite television shows and skip their not-so-favorite television commercials. Not surprisingly, they're less popular with television ad execs.

"The dirty little secret is that they all have DVRs, and they enjoying skipping commercials themselves," said James McQuivey, a principal media analyst at Forrester Research. "But they do fret constantly. And they need to use that fear to help them innovate and adapt."

Some companies, like TrimSpa and Kentucky Fried Chicken, think they've figured out how to adapt. They're trying to market their products with TiVo-proof ads, named after the popular brand of DVR.

KFC used an embedded message in one of its recent campaigns. Consumers had to watch the ad in slow motion to get a coupon for a free sandwich.

TrimSpa wouldn't release too many details of its new campaign but suggested images used in the television ads would remain on the screen no matter what a consumer tried to do with the remote.

That's a risky strategy, according to McQuivey.

"Do we try to frustrate our consumers, punish them in a way for skipping the commercials?" he asked.

And experts warn it's probably only a matter of time before TiVo-proof ads aren't really TiVo proof at all.

"People have been avoiding commercials ever since there have been commercials," said Ilya Vedrashko, an emerging media strategist at Hill Holiday and a frequent blogger on advertising issues. "Every time you try to shove new technology at people, they find a way around it. Remember pop-up ads? They were huge, but now everyone has a pop-up blocker."

Certainly, the advent of DVRs has made the future of the traditional 30-second television spot less certain, if not altogether obsolete.

"I would say the sky is falling, but there are plenty of ways to create a new sky," said Vedrashko. "A commercial needs to be compelling enough so that people won't skip through it."

The trouble is that everyone is trying to do the same thing, creating the "minimovie" syndrome, according to McQuivey.

"Everyone is trying to make an ad that's so compelling people won't walk away from it," McQuivey said, "so ads are looking more and more like each other."

It's not all bad news in the ad biz. A quick search on YouTube shows some of the most popular videos are commercials. One string of ads has had almost 2 million views.

And a recent Nielson survey showed that DVR owners might not be skipping as many commercials as previously thought. At least 40 percent of owners actually seem to watch the commercials -- or, at least, they don't fast-forward through them. Their level of engagement is another matter.

"From a consumer's perspective, skipping an ad doesn't have to be fast-forwarding through it," McQuivey said. "Skipping an ad could be checking e-mail, taking a bathroom break."

So "engaging" the consumer is a key buzzword in advertising these days. How to do it? That's open for discussion.

One way is product placement -- integrating the product into the television show itself. We may not be too far away from the kind of sponsored programming you saw in the '50s, according to McQuivey.

"In an ideal world you would see the ad, go to the product, see the product in the program," McQuivey said. "You go back to those old game shows and old varieties that were sponsored by things like Pepto Bismol. The products would be wrapped through and in that whole show."

But other marketers are looking forward, not back, and offering up new technologies that target audiences on a microlevel. SeaChange, an Acton, Mass.-based company, sells ad-insertion technology primarily to cable providers.

"We have a great application for broadcast, where you can manipulate your content almost in real time," said Terri Swartz, director of advanced advertising at SeaChange. "So, if you're a cruise company and you want to advertise your product differently if it's raining or if it's cold, you could make those changes."

And there is technology out there that would allow advertisers to send different versions of the same ad to different households -- even within the same zip code and on the same street.

Swartz thinks change is inevitable in television advertising simply because consumers are faced with so many different disruptive technologies.

"I think 10 years from now television will look radically different," Swartz said. "Thirty seconds is an eternity when you can push that fast-forward button. So advertisers are looking at all messages. They might offer a seven-second 'brought to you by' message instead of a branded message. One advertiser recently told us that five seconds was too long. Thirty-second spots won't be dead, but there will be other things too."

Swartz added that she sympathized with those who couldn't stand watching certain ads.

"If I never had to look at another erectile dysfunction ad, if there was a way to say to someone, 'Please don't waste my time with them,' I would do it," she said.

That day may not be too far away.

Now, if we could just do something about those annoying HeadOn ads, as well.