Bloggers may snicker at the thought of advertisers sitting around helplessly while PVR-empowered TV viewers zip through commercials, but forward-thinking agency creatives aren't losing that much sleep. After all, audiences have been brewing tea and going pee during commercial breaks for decades.

But, to the chagrin of creatives charged with the task of subverting this new technology, PVR (personal video recorder) and VOD (video on demand) providers have traditionally been slow to respond to advertisers' concerns. Those barriers are finally breaking down thanks to major providers such as TiVo and Time Warner Cable, which are finally offering advertising solutions predicated on the notion that if viewers want to choose when they watch a TV show, they'll also want to choose when they watch commercials.

In November, TiVo launched Program Placement, a new service that will insert targeted ads at the end of specific recorded programs, when, according to a TiVo news release, "there is nothing left to fast-forward through." Whether viewers will choose to watch will depend on how enticing the content is; either way, their decisions will be tracked by TiVo's audience measurement program. Burger King, GM, MasterCard and Court TV are among the first clients to get on board.

Not to be outdone, Time Warner Cable announced an advertiser-friendly feature called Active Advertising, which is a digital overlay that appears during a 30-second spot and allows viewers to vote in a viewer poll, request more information about the product or go to a VOD menu with more long-form ad content to choose from. After trial runs in Hawaii and Albany, the feature launched in New York in November for clients including American Express, GM, GE and Warner Bros.

But despite these positive advances, the task of creating advertising for consumption on PVR and VOD services is not without its difficulties. In some instances, a PVR service provider's basic technical requirements can influence the agency's ability to brand the entire interactive experience. For example, the colors pink and blue were key to McKinney Silver's "Choose Your Ending" campaign for Sony Bravia, but in some cases providers were unable to offer those specific colors in their overlays. "There is no standard format for these platforms and thus some are more customizable than others," says Bill Ward, management supervisor at McKinney Silver. "In our world, that essentially breaks down to how much you can dominate the space provided and thus create a more powerful experience between clients' content and the audience."

"It's a little bit like doing a print ad where you have to do different size mechanics for publications," says McKinney Silver creative director Jonathan Cude. "The graphics and artwork can change from provider to provider, but it doesn't affect the creative; it affects what you would see on a VOD screen. That will probably change because advertisers will want to control the whole user experience as much as possible." More difficult still was that the agency required an extra six weeks in order to tailor the spots to each provider's specifications. "There's a pretty steep learning curve in working with TiVo and Comcast," Cude says. "There's a tremendous lead time."

While the tendency is for advertisers to look at DVR and VOD technology as detrimental, it also offers a wide range of new creative opportunities. Thanks to digital cable, more conceptual forms of advertising are hitting the airwaves: long-form films, interactive ads featuring behind-the-scenes material, audience polls and hyperlinks to the Internet. "You can't run two-minute films on prime time network television - it would be too expensive," says BBDO ECD Don Schneider. "This is much freer; the shackles are off a bit. When we're creating a commercial, we have a communication strategy and tactical things to accomplish. The thinking has changed and this is a manifestation of that."

Like any new medium, the unique characteristics of PVR and VOD technology are paving the way for ingenious creative techniques.The digital channel FX UK - which is offered through British provider SkyPlus - got a hold of research that showed nearly 35% of their target audience watched the pilot of the series Sleeper Cell on digital playback. So, in preparing the channel's September campaign for the show Brotherhood, the marketing department came up with a still-frame spot, showing an image of Providence, Rhode Island's cityscape (where Brotherhoodis set) and the logo. The clever bit? The clouds in the sky move as the view fast-forwards. "We tried to create a spot where the image would stay static for 30 seconds and try to make it compelling by having a dramatic soundtrack," says FX UK spokesperson Jonathan Hollet. "FX is not one of the major channels, we're a young channel. It affords us a luxury to experiment."

Hollet says it's too early to tell if the ad was effective, but FX will continue with the idea for the channel's spring campaign. He also admits the creative has room to grow. "It did what we wanted it to do: the sales message remained on the screen long enough for you to ingest it," he says. "DVR technology is still emerging and any problems are going to be overcome by creativity."

BBDO www.bbdo.com
McKinney Silver www.mckinney-silver.com
FX UK www.fxuk.com