I always thought that the purpose of digital video recording services like TiVo was to let users skip through ads...but apparently TiVo thinks otherwise. Danny Sullivan has some insight today on plans for TiVo to offer searchable commercial advertising as part of their digital video recording service.

The idea is to allow users to search for commercial spots by keyword. So a user could type in long distance and then get a list of television commercials to watch. Advertisers could pay via a bidding system to make sure their commercial comes up at the top of the list. The problem here, as Danny points out is that television commercials are not a direct response medium. They are designed for branding and for entertainment. In fact, one could argue that they are supposed to send you to your computer in search of more information about a product. They're not supposed to be what you find when you go searching.

This isn't necessarily a big surprise though. So many within the advertising industry have still failed to grasp the real power being the web and search marketing. Just this week I spoke with someone that works at a large agency that still views a web site as a commercial, rather than a way to engage a customer. I've got to wonder if the people behind this new TiVo idea are similarly confused.