Soon, Advertisers Will Get You Too

With cable companies crowding the TV recording industry it once lorded over, TiVo has found a new revenue stream – selling advertisers info about commercial skippers. Already purveyors of minute-by-minute ratings for shows, TiVo will now offer demographic details to hungry advertisers, the Wall Street Journal reports. “I want to know which segments of my customers are skipping my ads,” one marketer said.

Early indications are that the 18-34 crowd skips the most ads, while older women skip the least. Nielsen already provides that kind of data, but TiVo’s 20,000-strong sample size dwarf’s the 3,000 DVRs Nielsen monitors. TiVo will also provide online user polls, which advertisers crave but Nielsen forbids. TiVo got the data cheap – the chance to win a new TiVo drew thousands. (More TiVo stories.)