Mike Shaw, the ABC President of Advertising Sales wants to develop technology to disable the fast forward button on DVR’s, forcing tv viewers to sit through commercials when viewing shows on their DVR’s like Tivo.  According to Mr. Shaw, people need to understand that “you can’t skip commercials.”   

Amazing.  Why are these guys using technology to try to force time-constrained consumers to watch untargeted ads?  Instead, let’s use technology to precisely target advertisements that actually have value to me as an individual.  Think, for example, about the potential of a partnership between Tivo and the networks that delivered targeted VPA (value per action) advertising to me based upon my viewing habits.     

The old model of cramming shotgun style ads down peoples’ throats is going to lose in the attention economy.  

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.