Increasing numbers of viewers are watching TV not at its regularly scheduled time - DVR'd, Tivoed, On Demand, on the web, even by buying DVD's. Which is a bitch for advertisers. Of course, it was only a matter of time before ad men caught up to all this. Welcome Zillion TV. What's Zillion TV? Glad you asked...
The company, backed by several major Hollywood studios,
is set to introduce Wednesday an ad-supported video-on-demand system in
which commercials are tailored to viewers, who can't fast-forward
through them. ZillionTV enables viewers to choose the categories of advertising that
are most interesting to them, and commercials fitting the bill are
inserted into TV shows and movies that are streamed via broadband onto
TV screens. Content comes from Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, NBC Universal, 20th Century Fox Television
and Disney, all of which are equity stakeholders in the new company.
Forty other partners also supply content, and discussions are under way
with Viacom and CBS. ZillionTV operates through a device it calls ZBar that it supplies for
free. Users must, however, pay a one-time activation fee of up to $100,
said CEO Mitch Berman, a TV industry veteran who helped found E!
See, you can't get away from the ads, as Jimmy Fallon's first broadcast made painfully clear. ("Lick It For Ten" product placement disguised as a sketch? "The Green Room, Sponsored By Bud Lime"?) But now the ads are going to cater to you. This Zillion TV, which will be coming in the fourth quarter and by years' end will have over 15,000 titles, sounds like some sort of wild futuristic marketing model:
Users maneuver through the ZillionTV interface with a motion-sensing remote similar to a Nintendo Wii controller. "The whole screen on your TV becomes interactive," Berman said. The remote has a "Buy Now" button so that advertised items can be
purchased on the spot through a virtual store operated by Visa, the credit card company that also is a ZillionTV stakeholder. The system also features a rewards program: The more commercials watched, the more points earned.
It's officially over. Throwing away all the worldly possessions and moving to an ashram now. Tell someone to tell our mystic leader to tell us how The L Word ends.
