PaidContent: Netflix And TiVo To Tie Up

PaidContent reports that Netflix and Tivo - two companies that many early adopters in consumer media love - will start to work together to deliver rented movies via online connections to Tivo digital video recorders (DVRs). The two firms, both of which have jounced traditional studios and networks out of thinking they can maintain the long stasis in their current distribution models, are both their category leaders currently, but both also are beginning to face competition by traditional players. Blockbuster is gunning for Netflix, and pretty much all of the cable companies are now trying to offer DVR alternatives to Tivo.

The marriage of the two services allows for the possibility of internet-style advertising and content subsidization of major studio movie rentals. Tivo's DVR technology allows for control and measurement of advertising that typically isn't found in broadcast media, or for that matter, movie rentals.

A largely unknown proportion of media consumption time has been increasingly soaked up with movie rentals, and a partnership with these companies may allow for that time to be re-incorporated into the media picture by advertisers - at least in terms of measuring its scale, if not providing insertions.