TiVo: From black box to best mate

TiVo’s brief was beautifully awkward.

Viewers love shows, characters and comfort watches. They do not love “advanced content discovery” or other tech jargon. Our job was to pull “Powered by TiVo” out of the black box and make it feel like the mate with the best taste in telly.

What can TV and entertainment marketers learn from TiVo’s social media case study?A: The TiVo work shows that recommendation and discovery products perform better on social when they behave like fans, not features. Instead of pushing tech claims, we built repeatable content franchises that spoke in the same voice as the comments. Underneath, we treated media as a test bed, setting targets for engagement and cost per view, then funnelling budget into the formats that beat benchmark. The result was entertainment-grade reach and efficient CPVs that gave TiVo hard proof to take into planning, partner conversations and future title launches.
The plan

We treated TiVo like a fan, not a feature.

Up front, we mapped a handful of “social shows” that behaved like mini franchises: Landman moments, Live Action Hits, dystopian picks, ultimate movie character showdowns, Brit-flavoured nostalgia and gameshows. Everything written in the same human voice as the comments. No product talk, no jargon, just “this is exactly what you fancy tonight” energy. All with a dash of creative excellence

Under the bonnet, we ran a very grown-up media plan.

Every format had a learning target for engagement and cost per view. We used low spend to test, then funnelled budget hard into the winners instead of spraying it evenly. Content and performance were built together, not thrown over the fence.

The impact:

In the UK, that mix did the heavy lifting. With a small budget on Meta, TiVo reached 1.83 million people and delivered around 1.75 million video views, generating 32.9k interactions. That is an engagement rate by reach of about 1.8%, comfortably above typical media and entertainment benchmarks on Facebook.

How did TiVo use social media to boost entertainment marketing performance?A: TiVo asked us to make “Powered by TiVo” feel less like a black box and more like the mate with the best taste in telly. We built a handful of fan-first “social shows” around titles like Landman, dystopian picks and Brit-flavoured nostalgia, then backed them with a grown-up Meta plan. In the UK, a small budget reached 1.83 million people, drove around 1.75 million video views and delivered a 1.8% engagement rate, ahead of typical media and entertainment benchmarks. With a cost per view of roughly $0.0036, TiVo was buying full views at below-market social costs.
Why does this TiVo social media campaign matter for growth-focused brands?A: For TiVo, this campaign turned social into a live demand test bed. The numbers proved that when TiVo’s badge leads smart, fan-first creative, titles travel further for less money and the data shows which shows deserve extra boost. For other growth-focused marketers, it is a blueprint. Blend content and performance from day one, treat ideas as social franchises, and hold every format to a benchmark on cost and engagement. That is how social stops being “nice to have” and starts working as a serious part of the entertainment P&L.

Media and entertainment brands on Facebook usually sit closer to 1.0–1.3% engagement per post, so TiVo’s 1.8% is clear out-performance for the category.

Cost per view landed at roughly $0.0036. In other words, we were buying full video views at a price point where many brands are just buying basic impressions, and at a fraction of what a view usually costs on video platforms. Average Meta CPMs hover around $7–8 per thousand impressions, and YouTube video views typically cost around $0.02–$0.03 each; TiVo was buying full views at roughly half the going Meta cost and around 6–8x cheaper than a typical YouTube view

Individual “social shows” behaved like real TV moments. Landman content alone pulled in over 780k viewers, with a supporting cast of formats in the high five figures. The recommendation engine stopped feeling like infrastructure and started feeling like taste.

For TiVo, this did more than make nice dashboards. It gave the team hard proof that “Powered by TiVo” can buy entertainment-grade attention at below-market cost, in a format partners and platforms can actually see working.

Those results armed the commercial side with a simple line for planning: when TiVo’s badge leads smart, fan-first social. It moved social out of the “nice to have” bucket and into a live demand test bed, making it easier to argue for budget, easier to brief broadcasters and partners, and easier to plug the next wave of shows into a model that is already proven.

That is the point for us.


We do not just do social. We think like a crack team sitting between content and performance, so your clever tech shows up as something people actually want to watch.

Could we do this for you?

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