Hallahan On Tech: Interactive resume, blog and portfolio by Christopher Hallahan

Though I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner, USA Today reports that the popular DVR manufacturer TiVo will soon begin reporting anonymous viewing data.  The data will "offer stations, advertisers and program producers year-round, second-by-second information about the shows and commercials watched by people who have one of the company's DVRs."  Though this is a great use of the technology (Nielson has to use custom viewing meters in sampled households in order to track activity), I am certain it will be a wake up call to advertisers when they find hard data that their ads are simply being skipped most of the time.  This will result in decreased ad revenues for the networks, and begin a push for a radically different advertising structure (think lower-third ads during TV shows and more ad space directly in the TiVo software).  With some analysts expecting DVRs to penetrate around 37% of houses by 2012, I wouldn't be surprised if our DVR "free ride" doesn't last much longer.

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