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December 28, 2005
TiVo: 'Buy our DVR to skip ads and we will sell different ads to you'
How many times have we heard someone use TiVo as a verb – as in ‘I’ll tivo that and watch it later.’ Like Google, TiVo has built a brand name that is recognized well beyond its actual customer base. Four years ago, it looked like TiVo would become a dominant consumer platform.
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But what is happening is they're getting a smaller and smaller piece of a growing DVR marketplace.
NBC cable exec Tom Rogers made the jump to CEO in July, taking over for co-founder Michael Ramsay, an engineer more attuned to the tech business than the entertainment world. Since then, Rogers has injected the company with a media-orientation.
It would appear that Tom Rogers is focused on being more than just a tech company. Like the media-savvy management team at Yahoo!, he wants TiVo to also be a media company. And a big part of that strategy is to become more attractive to advertisers. TiVo will need as many advertising partnerships as possible in order to scale the business and make real money off it. This is ironic since they are also responsible for creating the very box that helps viewers skip traditional commercials on television.
But I did not write this post to take any pot shots at them. Quite the contrary, I understand the compelling business reasons for them to do this. The odds are stacked against them and I think I see them misfiring on some tactical executions that will be necessary. But I wish them good fortune in their attempt.
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