TiVo lost in the Amazon jungle?

An interesting Slashdot post today notes a new deal struck between Amazon US and TiVo (the popular US advert-zapping set top pox much maligned by the advertising community). Rather than partnering to deliver video content from Amazon or something similarly innovative, it seems that TiVo has sold its soul doing a full circle and become a product pushing device in its own right.

The deal it appears is to serve up instantly buyable merchandise around certain top US shows so that viewers can watch and buy right away. Of course this is better than simple scattergun advertising but will TiVo users see it this way? After all, they bought the box to escape from adverts only to find themselves being served adverts through the very same device.

I have heard chatter about some new and more exciting developments in the IPTV advertising space. One such example is being able to provide targeted ads alongside web delivered content relating to their content and previous purchasing tastes. Such a service could technically serve different ads to different people even thought they were using the same IPTV service and watching exactly the same show.

This is a great idea and is likely to garner greater response and be much less intrusive than traditional methods. However, the way this kind of IPTV ad is delivered and the data used to target consumers obviously will have to be implemented smartly to avoid flak from internet privacy advocates.

Either way, surely this is where the market should be looking? Somewhere infinitely more effective than an advertising killer starting to provide adverts..