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The Almighty Buck The Internet

Tivo Tries, Cancels PayPerPost Ad Strategy 62

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-the-best-plan-folks dept.
Tivo tries out PayPerPost- essentially pseudo viral marketing where you pay people for creating advertising for you and getting it out on the net. Unsurprisingly, when this all came out, people complained and they killed the program and tried to pull the videos when they realized that they were looking like tools.
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Tivo Tries, Cancels PayPerPost Ad Strategy More

Tivo Tries, Cancels PayPerPost Ad Strategy

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  • It's "TiVo". (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You didn't capitalize the V.
  • Maybe Slashdot should try this. Let's see,
    1. Charge per post
    2. ???*
    3. Profit

      (*everyone leaves because we all spend too much time on Slashdot to earn enough money to pay for our posts)

  • Damn ads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Luke Dawson ( 956412 ) on Monday October 08, 2007 @10:04AM (#20898247)

    people complained and they killed the program and tried to pull the videos when they realized that they were looking like tools.
    Yeah, real professional commentary there. Anyhow, why can't we just ban these frigging ads where "real" people are supposedly testifying at just how great a product is? Everything from credit counseling to floor polish seems to have them these days. Seriously, can't they come up with something more original? I don't want to see a bunch of paid actors gushing about how fantastic a product is, I want to know what it does and why I should buy it. The most amusing one I saw was for a product that helps you store your kitchen roll by hooking a container over a door. The people were like "it's changed my life", "life is so much easier now"...I mean, what the FUCK? How messed up does your life have to be that where you store your kitchen roll has a profound impact on the quality of your life!?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by techpawn ( 969834 )
      They're banking on the social "word of mouth" style of advertising. It's the old psychological thing of "Oh hey! Bob's using it and he's doing well. I might as well too so I can do well!" That's why they have these "real" people give testimonials about the products. So other Sheeple will follow them off the cliffs

    • Re:Damn ads (Score:5, Informative)

      by maxume ( 22995 ) on Monday October 08, 2007 @10:29AM (#20898545)
      I'm concerned now, as I have no idea what a kitchen roll is, and apparently, I could be using one to change my life.

      (I'll jump in here and ruin the joke myself, to beat the inevitable interlopers to it, 'kitchen roll' is apparently how some British people refer to paper towels)
      • Kitchen roll is a, usually perforated, roll of absorbent paper for use in the kitchen hence the term "Kitchen Roll".

        Toilet roll is a, usually perforated, roll of abosrbent paper for use in the toilet.

        Paper towels are squares, or rectangles, of absorbent paper usually stacked one on top of the other.

        Tissues are like paper towels but usually more lightweight, often coloured or even perfumed.

        Handy Andies are small packets of tissues which can fit convieniently in a jacket pocket in place of a hankerchief.
        • In the house I grew up in Paper towels came in a two foot long roll.
          asswipe, toilet tisue, tp, whatever came in a 6 inch roll.
          paper napkins came in a stack.
          tissues came in a box (and let's not have any banter about what comes in a tissue)

          that doesn't mean that I'm right and you're wrong, it's just what my Moma called them.
          • Vive la difference !

            In my house we didn't have a Moma, the matriarch was referred to as Mum or in northern parts as Mom. It's possible some households referred to toilet paper as arse-wipes but never asswipes and they would be presented on a 15.24cm carboard tube.

            Some of my neighbours refer to a thing called a bab-ee which I assume is some sort of benefits token they can cash in for houses and drinking money, I'm not sure what the American term for that is ?
            • Incidentally, is your toilet paper really 6inches wide ?

              • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

                by mooingyak ( 720677 )
                We've got some big assholes over here. They tend to be very publicly visible and hold a wide variety of elected positions. I'm surprised you're not familiar with them.
    • > why can't we just ban these frigging ads where "real" people are supposedly testifying at just how great a product is?

      My fav is a Car Trade-in one... the guy talks about how he didn't have time to sell it himself or shop around, so he just went to [Company] and they gave him the best deal and less hassle than anyone else. But... if he went to them rather than shopping around, how did he know it was the best deal?

      So I don't think they should ban those ads. As long as companies want to throw away money
    • I have four words for you: most people are stupid. That's why they fall for the same advertising strategy time and time again. The more intelligent among us just want to know the facts: this is what the product is, this is what it does, this is why you'd want to buy it, and here is where you can buy it and how much it costs. The rest of the slobbering idiots in the world are easily distracted by pretty, shiny objects with glowing reviews by 'real' people or even by paid celebrities. A couple of people

      • C'mon, folks, Lindsay Wagner is a washed up actress with no career left. She said it worked well for her on TV because they paid her lots of money to say it worked well for her on TV. Duh.
        The logic here is that a company that has the money to pay an actress to promote her product is a company that also has the money to potentially handle the engineering and support correctly.
        • McDonald's has historically had the cash to pay lots of actors, big-name sports stars, etc., to promote their product. Do you think that their product is 'engineered' and 'supported correctly?'

          And, no, it's not an exception -- it's the rule. Companies make lots of money because they market their product well, no matter how bad that product is. So many companies these days are marketing and sales operations. Mattel doesn't even manufacture their own toys anymore -- all of their production is outsourced t

      • I have four words for you: most people are stupid.
        That's not four words!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by garcia ( 6573 )
      On my website I have a lot of "reviews" of restaurants in my area. Many of these I write about before they even open their doors to obtain a good Google search ranking so that when they do open I can capture many of the first searchers for them. When I do visit the places (or someone else does and posts a negative comment) I get a flood of astroturfing from the owners or employees (or other interested parties) which I usually can pick out immediately by the tone and message of the e-mail (corporate-speak

  • Woe be to TiVo (Score:5, Informative)

    by Generic Guy ( 678542 ) on Monday October 08, 2007 @10:57AM (#20898933)

    I hate to say it, but I can't say I'm surprised. Seems that in recent years TiVO has been losing support from their most-ardent fans -- the longtime TiVo owners (like myself). Tivo has squandered a lot of the goodwill from their own community.

    • There have been a lot of crazy pricing structure changes, all of which are more expensive than previously.
    • Tivo now wants a minimum one-year "lock-in" similar to the cell-phone dealers. You cannot try the service for a couple of months to see if you like it.
    • They ended the Lifetime Subscription option which was popular with folks who hate recurring bills.
    • After a year on the market there are serious questions about the performance and reliability of their newest and most-expensive HiDef units. And its incompatible with the new SDV (Switched Digital Video) being introduced on a lot of cable systems.
    • Encroachment of more and more insidious kinds of advertising on a machine already expensive to buy and maintain.
    • Customer service leaves a lot wanting. For the cost, you'd think they would have better/more-knowledgable CSRs without the long wait-times.
    • And most-dangerously... inexpensive, competing units direct from the Cable Companies and Satellite vendors which have moved from "outright horrible" to "moderately usable". TiVo is fighting a war of attrition.

    Tivo's biggest problem seems to be losing evangelism from their (former) biggest fans. It's too expensive and the lock-in seems abusive. And without the Lifetime to fall back on, I can't really recommend it anymore. I'm not the only old-timer who feels this way.

    It's no wonder they need to turn to astroturfing.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Seriously, there's no reason to buy a TiVo any more. Most people already pay their cable company for the only thing that TiVo actually offers, which is the TV guide.

      Otherwise, you're always better off renting a DVR from the cable company. Hard drives last about three years max. TiVo costs $300 plus a monthly fee of $13/month. You can rent a DVR from the cable company for about $15/month. So TiVo is only $2/month cheaper, and that's ignoring the upfront cost. Since the TiVo box will wear out and die in three
      • The cable dvr is != tivo.
        It's not the TV guide that is the "Tivo" stuff it's the interface to the guide info. That's the trick that makes me go back to my regular def tivo vs a hi-def box from comcast. Tivo has a lot of obvious features that the other interfaces just don't have. Otherwise I'd have already ditched my tivo. But due to the fact that they dropped lifetime subs (except from Humax machines) I'm not recommending anyone buy another one. Once you're hooked it's like crack, so those that have never

    • It's no wonder they need to turn to astroturfing.

      As opposed to just making things better.

      I guess that's why they call them "the good old days."

      There's still a lot of potential in TiVo, but, unfortunately, the company as a whole has gotten kicked around pretty good by analysts and profitability and the whole bean-counter stuff. It'd be neat if a company, one that isn't hanging on by a thread, would snatch it up and really improve things. Faster boxes, huge leaps in hard drive space, un-gimped TiVo-to-Go, etc.

      Not sure which came first, ReplayTV or TiVo, bu

      • I disagree that "TiVo certainly was the best of class for a while". TiVo was the most popular, but ReplayTV had a much better interface and automatically skipped commercials if you wanted it to. I had a 1st generation TiVo, but ditched it as soon as I saw my friend's ReplayTV. It wasn't even close who was better at the time.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by WhaThe ( 804992 )
          Agreed. TiVo had that magic branding. I couldn't even mention my Replay most of the time without saying "it's like a TiVo". Also worth noting is the fact that it records in MPEG2 and had a NIC for easy transfer to my PC. For the record mine is still running strong, I had a very rare lockup on it a few weeks ago and started to panic wondering what I would do without it.
    • You forgot that the term TiVOization was coined to fit the worse Evil(TM) TiVO has been doing... ;-)
    • Well just going by your list of bullet points it seems TiVo finally woke up and joined the rest of the corporate world. Same shit, different company.
    • The piss-slow processors they put in these things is infuriating. Press 'guide' and it takes a full 3-seconds for anything to happen. Same for changing channels, etc.
  • Who really cares about TiVo? I switched from them to the DirectTV DVR (HD) and never looked back. Sure, I miss some of the functionality, but then I don't miss them deleting shows I recorded because they have "Timed Out". TiVo can suck it.
    • "Because they have timed out"? Do you mean, because you're too lazy to manage your hard drive space and set "Keep until..." and/or look in the "Deleted Items" folder, and you tend to ignore the large easy-to-read icons that are placed there to let you know that a show might be deleted to make room for something else? Or are you talking about the maybe 5 shows in all the history of television that have actually had a copy-protection time-out set, in which case you're blaming TiVo for something that is bein
    • You honestly think DirecTV DVR is better than Tivo? Or are you a paid viral marketer for DirecTV?
      • I honestly think it is better. I had all kinds of problems with TiVo, it would freeze up, there was a very bad delay between when I pushed a remote button, and when it actually received and processed the command, sometimes up to 30 seconds. Tuners went out in it within 10-12 days of purchase, and on, and on! I don't work for DirecTV or anyone even remotely in that industry, but I know what I like, and that is a product that works as advertised.

  • stupid covert ads (Score:5, Funny)

    by britneys 9th husband ( 741556 ) on Monday October 08, 2007 @11:26AM (#20899295) Homepage Journal
    I hate it when companies like Tivo do dishonest things like paying people to write crappy covert ads for them. At least when I get stressed out like this, I can calm down by smoking Laramies or Laramie Extra-Tars. The clean refreshing taste of Laramie. Start smoking them today, or you'll live to regret it!

    • Start smoking them today, or you'll live to regret it!
      Are you implying that Laramie smokers won't regret their decision, or just that they won't live long enough to regret it? ;-)
  • Hence my screen name. They royally screwed an avid fan at version 1! ME!

    I've been rooting for them to go down in flames ever since.

    Love my 3 yr old HD-PVR from Brighthouse!

  • ...made from high grade steel with ergonomic rubber grips. I use them all the time and they're great. Can be found at your local Home Depot.

    (Where's my money?)

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