I want ads. Not most ads but rather ones that are focused and targeted on my interests and what I care about. One could argue that a core premise to advertising is creating demand, but I’d rather think of advertising exposing supply to demand in an influencing way.

The premise in your paper is dealing with the current state of DVR usage. It’s well thought out and pretty balanced. What I thought was missing was discussion around viewers primary motivation (watching the TV program) vs. the technology itself (DVR) and what it’s capable of performing.

For example, it’s always amazed me that DVR providers have, for the most part, not implemented the internet connection resident on the back of most DVR’s. The opportunity to leverage a back-channel seems very, very strong.

Learning about my viewing habits and interests would be incredible for advertisers. If I could have a ‘MyAccount’ on a TiVo or DirecTV site — where I could pick programming, be alerted to programming that matches my interests and maybe be able to remotely configure and control my DVR — I’d be all over that like a bad suit.

The DVR providers could easily create an alias to MyAccount (to shield advertisers from an actual name but rather have access to my profile data in order to target ads) and provide focused and targeted advertising to Steve.