On the cusp of out-of-home streaming, and as anticipated, TiVo has begun to dial up Roamio advertising ahead of the holidays. By way of Steve Lunceford, as you can see above, Sea-Tac Airport is already blanketed in thousands of square yards of TiVo vinyl promoting the Roamio’s ability to offload recordings for our in-flight viewing pleasure. Beyond this multipanel behemoth, Steve also came across a lighted sign in a seating area that communicates:
Make travel plans with your TV shows. Download recorded cable shows to watch on your iPad. Only with TiVo Roamio.
Of course, only two of the three Roamio models… actually roam. But we’ll leave that mess to TiVo’s marketing and legal teams.
On the other end of the spectrum, on-box TiVo Roamio ad campaigns have recently increased, sullying the UI in a variety of locations and some owners are not pleased. Most onerous is the redesigned Pause Menu ad.
What I conveyed to the Associated Press in 2009 in equally applicable today… despite benefits of a vastly superior Roamio platform.
Dave Zatz, a 37-year-old network engineer in Herndon, Va., isn’t happy about it because he bought a TiVo digital video recorder and pays a subscription to skip ads. “It’s obnoxious,” he said of the ads that appear when a TV program is paused. He said other ads have been on the periphery or appear on the menu page. This is the first time he’s noticed TiVo layering an ad on top of an actual program. He said he’s been wondering, “Who are TiVo’s customers?” People like him, or advertisers? “They’re getting paid on both ends.”
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And here's how they advertised TiVoToGo on USAir tray tables in 2006:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rcrowley/258745861/
I have also heard advertisements on WTOP the last several mornings.
How much do you pay a month for WTOP? Also, it's interesting given one of the early selling points of DVR was to avoid ads... If they don't bother you, great. But they do bother me and it seems like I have some company in that regard. They obviously don't annoy me enough to cancel, sell, etc. But TiVo loses some warm & fuzzy points. Also, it's worth mentioning in a public forum as a couple Roamio reviewers I've corresponded with have not been exposed to ads - either TiVo didn't have the ad inventory at the time, the ad units weren't yet active, or maybe press boxes have been excluded.