TORONTO - Viewers are willing to pay for specific content; are they ready to pay for the advertising that goes with it?

Cable operators and service providers across North America are betting "Yes".

The recent acquisition of Scientific-Atlanta by Cisco Systems is a case in point. Among the many points of intersection and synergy the two companies hope to exploit is interactive television and advertising.

S-A has partnered with Millennium Networks, for example, on the use of an audience measurement service in its interactive television system. The Millennium Audience Engine runs in a set-top box and it's designed to capture subscriber tuning information. Cisco, of course, is into selling systems for cable operators, including those that feature interactive advertising. With it, cable providers can offer new services such as Web surfing, enhanced TV, targeted advertising, electronic commerce, chat, and interactive games.

But, in Canada at least, it may be a couple of years before cable operators can lay their money down on what's known as hyper-targeted TV advertising.

During a recent presentation to The Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) Canada, experts in the field explained why the idea is crucial to a profitable future.



Whether it's called "addressable advertising", "geo-targeting," or "hyper-targeting", new techniques and technologies are moving the idea of household targeting from fantasy to reality.

Attendees at the CTAM event in Toronto on November 15, representing major cable companies, ad agencies, programmers and specialty outlets, listened attentively as David Downey, President, Invidi Technologies Corp., described two deals soon to launch with U.S. cable companies to install its software and begin delivery of "hypertargeted" ads in the new year.

He said his company's technology gives cable operators, advertisers and media buyers a measurable and accountable way to get TV ads in front of the right viewer demographic. With Invidi advertisers can select specific audience demographics and target them with specific numbers of impressions, he explained.

Invidi is building targeted media solutions across the entire digital media enterprise - DSTB, DBS, Wireless, Internet, Broadband and beyond.

It could be years before Invidi comes to Canada, but two U.S. cable companies are planning to roll it out early next year.

In addition to the business opportunities, technical and deployment issues, there are concerns about privacy, and the possible audience's reaction to "living room-based" information about them being used, the attendees heard. Downey said Invidi built its solutions with privacy concerns in mind. Information collected about a viewer resides in the set-top box, and the matching of viewers and ads is all done electronically.

Invidi says that cable or satellite operators need not do anything special to develop the baseline profile that is loaded in a viewer's set-top box.

Invidi makes its software available for free, but it takes a percentage of any additional revenue broadcasters and cable companies generate with the technology.

CTAM has long sought to explore new collaborative marketing initiatives and technologies. From the first looks at ITV and T-commerce (for "Television Commerce"), data-collection techniques have engaged some of the industry's leading manufacturer and developers, including Microsoft, AT&T, Liberty Media, Proctor and Gamble, NDS (Rupert Murdoch), Cisco, A.C. Nielson, Scientific-Atlanta, and Young and Rubicam.

Technology from Visible World is also being used by U.S. cable companies to tailor advertisements by geography. Calling itself "an antidote" to ad skipping, Visible World says sharply targeted ads can help boost return on marketing investment dollars.

Direct TV, AT&T and the so-called E.piphany personalization software allows a robust, real-time marketing engine to personalize customer and visitor interactions.

SpotOn is a software-based and TV-centric system that also enables the delivery and accounting of highly targeted and interactive advertising via digital cable, digital satellite, and digital broadcast television. SpotOn allows viewers to choose and interact with television commercials (based on demographic or household-specific profiles); and it allows television network operators to generate new TV commerce revenues.

Meanwhile, OpenTV Corp., another provider of DTV technologies and services has recently acquired most of the cable TV advertising inventory assets of CAM Systems (and its affiliates) in a deal worth about $20 million USD. The deal makes OpenTV a leader in providing technology and services to cable television operators that are central to managing their local cable TV advertising businesses. The transaction advances OpenTV's ability to provide interactive, addressable and on-demand advertising services, the company reported.

As the hyper-targeted ad market grows, it's not surprising a dedicated industry coalition has arisen, itself focused on addressable advertising. The Addressable Advertising Coalition wants to build awareness amongst all parties about the benefits of customized, addressable TV commercials and programs.

Among the panelists participating in the discussions were:
Bob Reaume, Vice President, Policy & Research for the Association of Canadian Advertisers
David Downey, CEO Invidi
Sunni Boot, president and CEO Zenith Optimedia
Mike Lee, chief strategy officer, Rogers Communications
Paul Robertson, president, Corus Television

Moderator: Michael Vaughan, ROBTv.


http://www.cablecastermagazine.com/article.asp?id=49837&issue=11212005