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IBM Seeks to Stick Commercial breaks onto DVDs
November 28, 2007

IBM has filed a patent that interrupts DVDs for these commercial messages.

According to the filing, the DVD would contain a certificate that tells the player whether the movie was purchased commercial free or with commercial subsidies at a lower cost.

The player would then be triggered to either skip the periodic commercials during the movie or play them. The commercials could be obtained from an online service or the DVD itself, according to the filing, which was dated Aug. 30.

At that point, a user may actually elect to upgrade to a certificate that skips the commercials.

Digital blackmail anyone? The commercial breaks would be deemed so annoying by viewers that they can opt in real time to pay more money just to remove them.

In a brave new world where set top boxes -- like TiVos -- can monitor habits and demographics of viewers and sell the data to advertisers -- this one sounds particularly draconian.

Earlier this week, TiVo struck a deal with NBC Universal to sell data about which commercials TiVo owners actually watched. TiVo had already offered the service to advertisers. (TiVo also sells interactive tags -- which allows an advertisers tag to be seen as viewers blaze through them.)

In its patent filing, IBM sees DVDs as an uptapped stream of ad revenue.

"Revenues from DVD advertising may contribute to the reduction in cost of the DVDs," the filing states. "Thus, what is needed is a system and method of providing advertising during DVD playback."

Posted by Ned Randolph on November 28, 2007 | Comments (0)