Advertising

Superbowl Advertising On Twitter: It's All Gibberish

In an industry where any publicity trumps questionable publicity, several brands have leveraged Twitter to draw attention to themselves via apparent mistakes. It’s a low risk, high reward approach that got going last summer when Chipotle faked a Twitter hack. The costs of sending a tweet, versus shooting and placing a Super Bowl commercial, are insignificant. And many members of the social network seem to enjoy calling out and retweeting the “drunk” 140 character missives. But as an old fuddy duddy with an apparently rusty funny bone, the attempted manipulation and misdirection is too much to overcome, leading me to purge most “brands” I follow on Twitter.

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TiVo Thumb Experiment Results; Super Bowl Next

Last month, TiVo repurposed their iconic thumbs up/down buttons for an “Advisors” experiment — providing viewers a method to rate The Voice finalist performances. And the results are in, with over 40,000 recorded clicks correlating perfectly to show results: Contestant Thumbs Up Thumbs Down Tessanne Chin 73% 27% Jacquie Lee 61% 39% Will Champlin 53% … Read more

LG Compromises webOS with Interactive Advertising

LG’s re-ignition of webOS as a fresh, fun, and spry smart television platform has been generating a lot of buzz here at CES. Indeed, in my limited exposure, it looks quite nice. But it’s not all about us… as a major component of LG’s webOS strategy revolves around interactive advertising. The strength of webOS is also … Read more

TiVo Thumb Buttons To Rate The Voice Finalists

the-voice-tivo

Perhaps another benefit of the TiVo 20.3.8 software update is a framework to tabulate in-show tenor by repurposing those iconic TiVo thumbs up/down remote buttons (versus their original purpose to rate programming as a means of generating suggestions). Classified as an “experiment” by “TiVo Labs”, select customers have been recruited to test this new functionality:

If you’re interested in helping out, here’s what to do:

  • Watch The Voice episode “Live Final Performances,” airing Monday, 12/16 at 8 PM/7 Central.
  • As you watch the episode, please use the Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down buttons on your TiVo remote throughout the episode to rate the contestants’ performances.
  • Really loving it? Press Thumbs Up! Totally hate it? Press Thumbs Down!
  • You can use the Thumbs buttons as many times as you want throughout the episode.
  • You can use the Thumbs buttons more than once on the same performance.
  • Feel free to fast-forward, pause, and rewind as usual.

You don’t have to watch the episode live as it airs, but if possible, please try to watch the episode on Monday night. Sound interesting? Just watch and click — that’s all you have to do. There’s no online survey, just “vote with your remote.”

While TiVo’s collected this sort of behavioral data before,

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TiVo & Sling Duke It Out

 

Hot on the heels of Roamio’s out-of-home streaming release, TiVo and Sling have begun trading blows online. And, once again, TiVo is positioning their DVR as the One Box. However, unlike the Premiere platform, they have a much more compelling argument this time around… featuring that aforementioned streaming and a usable Netflix client. However, without the Opera TV app store, they still fall ridiculously short of Roku’s vast library of channels and TiVo’s limited DIAL support is no match Apple’s infinitely capable Airplay.

In the other corner, Sling lays out a streaming comparison that is mostly correct. TiVo Roamio is currently limited to iOS and WiFi, whereas a Slingbox is largely agnostic when it comes to connection and platform. Sling claims Roamio is incapable of automatic quality adjustment, which we now know to be inaccurate

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TiVo Cranks Up Roamio Advertising

tivo-seatac

On the cusp of out-of-home streaming, and as anticipated, TiVo has begun to dial up Roamio advertising ahead of the holidays. By way of Steve Lunceford, as you can see above, Sea-Tac Airport is already blanketed in thousands of square yards of TiVo vinyl promoting the Roamio’s ability to offload recordings for our in-flight viewing pleasure. Beyond this multipanel behemoth, Steve also came across a lighted sign in a seating area that communicates:

Make travel plans with your TV shows. Download recorded cable shows to watch on your iPad. Only with TiVo Roamio.

Of course, only two of the three Roamio models… actually roam. But we’ll leave that mess to TiVo’s marketing and legal teams.

On the other end of the spectrum,

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ACC Digital Hits Roku, Falls Flat

No one was more excited than I to see that the ACC Digital Network had created a Roku channel. And my excitement lasted just long enough to download the channel and fire up highlights of former Duke basketball player Mike Dunleavy. Unfortunately, that’s where the fun ended. Where to start? With the video quality? Horrific. … Read more