By Debra Ellis

What would have happened to the effectiveness of television advertising if people had to act to see the ads?

Think about TiVo for a minute.

When technology that allowed people to skip advertisements first appeared, marketers feared the medium would lose effectiveness.

Years later there are mixed reviews but nothing that indicates the DVR has significantly reduced the return-on-investment from televisions ads.

Like being able to skip through commercials, Gmail has launched a new inbox that makes it possible for users to skip the promotional messages.

The design concept is similar to that of TiVo. The objective of both concepts is to give the user a better experience.

There is one major difference between how the two work: Skipping advertisements with TiVo requires user action while Gmail does it automatically. (more…)