TiVo collects and sells usage information

Digital video recorder maker TiVo Inc. hopes to make a buck out of its customers' viewing habits, selling the data it collects to broadcasters and advertisers.

TiVo will sell second-by-second audience viewing data and a quarterly Commercial Viewing Report that will tell when TiVo users skip advertisements, the San Jose, California, company said in a statement.

Information for the detailed analysis is derived from data collected when TiVo boxes make their daily call to retrieve programming information, TiVo said. The data is anonymous and is compiled to provide statistics about activity by many users, according to TiVo.

Digital video recorders record programming onto a hard disk drive and allow users to pause live broadcasts, show instant replays and easily skip commercials. To watch commercial free, TiVo subscribers often start a 60-minute show about 20 minutes after the broadcast starts so they can skip commercials and catch up with the program's end in real time, according to the TiVo Web site.

The first TiVo Commercial Viewing Report shows that users tend to skip commercials in comedies and general drama programs but will watch ads in reality TV, news and event programs. For example, 75 percent of TiVo users who watched the Grammy Awards watched through the commercials aired during the broadcast, while only 39 percent watched commercials during the comedy "Friends," according to TiVo.

TiVo's new play for revenue could become a privacy issue, but it is not yet because the data is anonymous, said Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group.

"As long as data can not be traced to a household or individual, the privacy implications are not that great," he said.

Tien, a TiVo customer himself, said he is "disappointed" that TiVo apparently needs to supplement its business with the selling of information on user habits. It could be a first step in the wrong direction, he said.

"It is not unusual for companies to begin adjusting their privacy policies and to turn to greater and greater exploitation of user records. I hope that does not happen to TiVo," Tien said.

TiVo claims to have more than 700,000 subscribers, a number it projects will surpass 1 million by the end of the year.

IDG News Service

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