TiVo Expands Ratings Service

Digital video recorder (DVR) provider TiVo has added 17 more cable networks to the roster of broadcast and cable channels for its Stop||Watch ratings service. The firm now tracks ratings for 93 networks across the US.

Todd Juenger, President & General Manager, TiVo Audience Research & Measurement, said that this move was part of an 'aggressive expansion' strategy, intended to bring increased transparency and accountability to TV advertising.

'With hundreds of networks now available in most households, an increasingly large amount of viewing is going completely unmeasured by the currency,' he stated. 'Because the Stop||Watch ratings service has a sample size that is 25 times the size of any other source of DVR viewership, we are able to offer an economical service that brings measurement to these channels.'

New cable networks added to TiVo's lineup include Universal HD, The Independent Film Channel, Sundance, the NBA Network, and the Fox Movie Channel.

Stop||Watch, which was first introduced in 2007, offers a sortable database of ratings for nationally run programs and adverts from cable and broadcast networks.

In addition, the firm's Power||Watch ratings service provides advertisers access to second-by-second program and commercial ratings data, with demographic segmentations, for 20,000 households who have volunteered to take part in a passive consumer panel.

These segmentations include income, geography, ethnicity, number of children and tenure of subscriber, which Juenger says allows TiVo to associate household data with viewership data, and then produce program and commercial viewership reports by aggregated demographic and behavioral audience groups.

Founded in 1997, TiVo developed the first commercially available digital video recorder, which was sold through consumer electronics retailers and its own web site.

The firm is online at: www.tivo.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.