If you’ve ever gotten the feeling that your DVR is tracking your every move…well, it is. And if you own a TiVo, that information is now available to Google: TiVo and Google have announced a new agreement that will see TiVo turning over aggregate TiVo television viewing and audience measurement data to Google to help measure the viewership of ads sold through Google’s TV Ads platform.
“Working with Google is an important milestone for our audience research business and represents a shared approach to developing innovative products and services to help the media industry better understand the effectiveness of ad campaigns in an evolving TV landscape,” said TiVo VP for audience research and measurement Todd Juenger, in a statement.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Under the deal, Google will have access to anonymized second-by-second TV viewing data from standalone TiVo subscriptions, enabling Google to measure ad impressions and effectiveness of ads sold through Google TV Ads. The second-by-second part is important: that kind of data enables Google to determine whether viewers watch all of an ad, part of an ad, fast forward through an add, or (heaven forfend) actually rewind back to an ad to see what it was all about.
Google launched its TV Ads program in 2007, enabling advertisers to theoretically reach up to 96 million households with highly targeted television advertising. Google claims the service has dished out more than 100 billion ad impressions to date. Google TV Ads handles ad placements for a variety of cable channels, including Hallmark Channel, GSN, Syfy, CNBC, MSNBC, and CBS College Sports.
