Ad Age’s Rance Crain thinks that Tivo will amount to no more than a minor irritant for TV executives and that the :30 spot will continue to thrive as the major creative unit for TV.
I’m not so sure he is right. Certainly, a wholesale, overnight change is not going to happen. Everything takes time. But, once the Tivo technology become resident in cable set top boxes it will just become another ubiquitous device that people will have to “manage” how they view TV. It will simply become habit to view TV on your own terms and on your own schedule.
Ads will certainly be skipped but new “embedded” ad technology will arise. The ad business will never die. But, if we don’t think about what the future will bring now, believe me, some one else will and they will replace the ad agency as we currently know it.
