Comcast Aims Its Tools for Ad Segmenting

Comcast Corp. recently added its Adtag and Adcopy targeting products to Indianapolis and Philadelphia.

The March 22 deployment in Indianapolis completes the rollout of Adtag and Adcopy to all of the MSO’s Midwest systems. Comcast launched the segmentation tools in its home market of Philadelphia four days earlier.

Adtag and Adcopy allow advertisers to run different versions of commercials within the same market based on demographic and psychographic data gleaned from various neighborhoods.

For example, if Comcast sold General Motors Corp. a local avail on ESPN, GM could run spots for the Chevy Suburban in one area of the market, while viewers in other parts of town would see ads for a GMC truck or a Pontiac.

“Everyone is seeing a GM-branded product. The models that they’re seeing have been determined for those people that have the highest propensity to buy those brands within a marketplace,” said Hank Oster, senior vice president of the MSO’s Comcast Spotlight ad-sales division.

Comcast also offers Adtag and Adcopy in Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, Detroit, and Washington D.C.

Oster said Comcast expects to offer advertisers Adtag and Adcopy in 19 of the top 25 markets by year-end.