We knew someone would think of it eventually and it looks like a joint venture between Comcast and TV Guide may be the first.
Radnor’s Guideworks, a joint venture between Comcast and TV Guide is the company that maintains Comcast’s interactive program guide. This is what you see when using the company’s DVR. It seems they’ve recently applied for a patent that will allow them to provide alternate or substitute information when fast forwarding is detected. That’s right! If this is approved and added to STBs, the minute you press that FF button on your remote, the box will start serving your alternate ads.
From the patent filing abstract:
Systems and methods for displaying substitute media while fast forwarding past advertisements are provided. When a user reaches the advertisement, the interactive media guidance application may receive an instruction to fast forward the advertisement. In response to the fast forward instruction, the interactive media guidance application may identify and display substitute media instead of the advertisement. The substitute media may be an image, a video frame/clip, a graphic, an animated graphic, or any other suitable media. The substitute media may be distributed in the advertisement using any suitable method. For example, the substitute media may be incorporated in the video frames of the advertisement (e.g., overlaid in the video frames of the advertisement), added as hidden video frames distributed in the advertisement, or any other suitable approach. An advertisement tool for creating advertisements that include substitute media, and for previewing advertisements as they are fast forwarded is also provided.
Tossing up a banner as Tivo does is one thing. If you continue reading through the patent application however, we find that these alternate ads could include video. Whether this will actually stop you from truly fast forwarding remains to be seen but you can bet that if this goes live they’ll make the most of it.
Your days of commercial skipping just might be coming to a close.
You can read the rest of the patent application here.
via Derek Flickinger
This is just more reason to buy a TiVo, Moxi, or Media Center PC.