Ad Age: Will TiVo Survive the Revolution it Wrought?

Ad Age's editor Scott Donaton says there is no longer any question that digital video recorders will reach critical mass and eventually reshape TV advertising as we know it: they will. The more pertinent question, for DVR (which I've more often heard called PVR, for personal video recorders), will this trend emerge into more than simply ad skipping and TV on demand, and can current market leader TiVo stay ahead of that game?

TiVo's new president, Marty Yudkovitz, a longtime NBC executive, sees threat from the cable companies, which could, if they want to, deliver most of TiVo's capabilities now. Yudkovitz's strategy, therefore, is to convince advertisers and agencies that TiVo represents more of an opportunity than a threat, letting them enhance the effectiveness of ads "with targeting, long-form content, audience measurement and interactive capabilities," Ad Age writes. But winning that argument is not going to be easy.