TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), a company specialized in advanced television services and advertising solutions for digital video recorders (DVRs), launched a free, interactive website whereby brand managers, CMOs and anyone interested in commercial ratings can quickly analyze how effective a brand’s television commercials are at retaining viewers and how well they are performing relative to competing brands.

The site, powered by TiVo’s flagship research tool, Stop||Watch ratings service and its unique second-by-second measurement capabilities, demonstrates that there is more accurate information available to the media industry to help them determine the efficacy of their TV ads beyond the limited data used as the industry currency today.

Tara Maitra, Vice President, Advertising & Research Sales, said, "It is no secret that existing currency and methods of measuring the quantity and quality of television advertising audiences are antiquated and broken, lacking the ability to measure commercial ratings second-by-second for example. TiVo wants to make it easy for all marketers to begin incorporating better metrics into their decision making processes — and we’ve decided this easy-to-use web tool is a great way to help people understand more broadly the value of our data. In this day and age, marketers shouldn’t have to pay millions of dollars to obtain basic audience counts. TiVo’s new service showcases just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the various anonymous measurement solutions TiVo offers its customers; they have a free, uncomplicated, yet effective, tool which yields invaluable results that others cannot with just the click of a mouse."

Beginning today visitors to the website: www.tivo.com/ad-scorecard can compare up to three brands with national broadcast and cable television spots against each other to determine which one most effectively retains viewers over a timeframe ranging from one week to three months. Once the desired brand names are entered, a simple click of the mouse compares brands and deems the brand which saw the least amount of commercial avoidance the winner. In addition to revealing the brand which retained the most viewers, website visitors are shown the weekly performance for each brand broken out in a colorful, graphical chart display.

Offering a free taste of TiVo’s anonymous audience research capabilities shows how far more advanced TiVo’s data is compared to today’s industry currency and how that data is helping drive the future of viewership measurement. Those in the media and advertising industries that aren’t already subscribers to TiVo’s various research products can use the regularly updated information on the website as an on-going tracking tool to measure the performance of their television advertising and gain an appreciation for the deeper insights available to customers who subscribe to TiVo’s full suite of research offerings.

In order to showcase this new tool’s ability to serve as a quick reference for those interested in expanding their knowledge about brand effectiveness on television and seeing firsthand how more granular commercial data can improve ad dollar allocation TiVo recently ran sample comparisons involving a number of companies. Elissa Lee, Vice President, TiVo Audience Research & Measurement Product Management, observed, "In a head to head battle of the brands between fast food chains McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s, it was Burger King who was able to retain the most viewers during recent commercials."

Additionally, TiVo looked at how promotional spots for major broadcast network shows perform against each other and between those ads aired by networks ABC, CBS, NBC, it was CBS who came out the winner by experiencing the least amount of commercial avoidance. These examples are just two of the near infinite combinations visitors to TiVo’s site will be able to interact with. TiVo’s decision to offer a free look into its anonymous ratings data will help marketers become more aware of TiVo’s second-by-second measurement capabilities and their effectiveness over the current industry standard.

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