DVR vendor/service provider, TiVo, says that five more high-profile brands--Ameriquest, E*Trade Financial, Nautilus, Novartis, and Tylenol--have agreed to use its new direct response interactive TV advertising technology (note: General Motors and The WB Television Network have also signed up to use the technology). The technology, unveiled by TiVo last month (see [itvt] Issue 6.12 Part 2), allows advertisers to insert a customized call-to-action, which TiVo calls a "tag," into their linear commercials. When TiVo subscribers select the tag (by pressing the thumbs-up icon on their TiVo remote), the linear TV feed is paused, and they are "telescoped" to long-format advertising and/or to an app that allows them to enter their personal information to receive more information about an advertised product. In addition, the customized tags appear over commercials on recorded programming when TiVo subscribers fast-forward through commercial breaks. The tags only work on TiVo Series2 boxes, of which there are currently around a million in the field. According to David Courtney, the TiVo executive who has headed up its advertising operations (he holds the title, EVP, group executive, corporate products and services, and is also the company's CFO) since the recent departure of Kimber Sterling, a significant advantage of TiVo's platform for direct response advertisers is that it can provide them "with the information they need to know about what type of content their target audience is voluntarily viewing and what types of interactive advertising features can enhance their advertising messages."
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