Case Study #3: TiVo in the Ad Sales Business

TiVo created a convenience for viewers and a threat to advertisers. The friendly, smiling set-top box was definitely a bane for advertisers. However, the media mix is shifting given the proliferation of mobile technology, Web 2.0 platforms and other measurable sources of customer engagement - People can be entertained and informed by more mediums than the television. What happens to TiVo?

According to a June 18th article in Businessweek, TiVo is aspiring to be the Google of television. It wants to help viewers navigate the increasing selection of of entertainment choices and sell ads to boot. "Like Google," says CEO Thomas S. Rogers, "TiVo will bring that ease of use to TV sets."

Stratelysis doesn't always have to be about executing a new product idea or strategic relationship. It can also represent the process of evolving an existing product or service offering based on market transformations WITHOUT trading off key assets of the brand.

TiVo still enables customers to select and view programs with ease and no interruption, but given what the company can learn about customer usage of TiVo service, they are well-positioned to sell customized, engaging and targeted ad inventory to their clients. This provides an incremental revenue stream to the company that can recover, if not offset, losses from a declining set-top box subscription base. Given that one can TiVo from a computer or cell phone, the ads can also be integrated into those popular technologies, thereby increasing the frequency of targeted communication to capture more data about the customer. This will help refine and forecast revenue and profit generation attributed to that specific marketing tactic.