January 8, 2008
- Top Story: Comcast Spotlight Gets Insight
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Great Ideas
- Nixing Fast-Forward
- Demonstrating Interactivity
- Listening Before Closing
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Briefing Room
- Mediacom Gets Political in Iowa
- Cable Nets Seen Outpacing ’08 Advertising Market
- Cable News Category Rises, with Fox Leading Pack
- Digital-Ad-Delivery Firm Sold
- Coca-Cola Reups for Exercise TV Sponsorship
- Cable Networks Set New Viewership Marks in ‘07
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- People
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Comcast Spotlight Territory Expands
It’s not exactly on the order of the 2006 transfer of Adelphia Media Services to new ownership, but the local-cable-advertising landscape has been reshaped over the last week with the closing of a deal to divide a Comcast-Insight Communications partnership.
Completion of the previously announced transaction gives Comcast’s Spotlight advertising-sales unit control of an additional 696,000 basic-video subscribers in five Midwestern U.S. TV markets: Champaign-Springfield-Decatur, Ill., at No. 84, is the largest of the five. Others are Peoria-Bloomington (Ill.-Ind.); Rockford, Ill.; Lafayette, Ind.; and Quincy-Hannibal-Keokuk, (Ill., Mo., Iowa). Comcast began represent advertising sales immediately upon the transaction’s closing.
For Insight, the deal reduces its local-advertising presence. Insight now serves 665,000 basic subscribers versus roughly 1.36 million before the partnership was divided.
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A Model for VOD, Displaying ITV Intricacies and Tips for Better Sales Communication
Forego Fast-Forward: A key to making cable video-on-demand service attractive for advertising might be to disable one of its core features. In Orange County, Calif., where Cox Communications is conducting a trial of ad-supported VOD content that’s free to viewers, assuring advertisers that viewers won’t fast-forward past commercials has helped Cox and its program providers to recruit sponsors, said Stacy Melle, NBC Universal’s vice president of marketing for digital distribution. “Without that disablement, it’s really hard to bring an advertiser into the fold,” Melle said. NBCU -- which provides programs including 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights to the Cox deployment -- would like to see more cable providers adopt the
approach. “It’s a model we’d like to see embraced by the industry,” she added.
Show, Don’t Tell: Cable MSOs are trying to overcome challenges in describing new interactive advertising options by developing online demonstrations that show advertisers exactly how the services work. One new example, from Cox Media, uses streaming-video technology to provide a visual depiction of Cox’s “FreeZone” ad-supported VOD service. The tutorial, embedded within Cox Media’s Web site, includes a case study describing how upscale furniture retailer Robb & Stucky has used Cox’s long-form VOD-advertising platform to attract customers.
Stop Talking: Listening closely to what clients say they need from their advertising campaigns can be a key to closing a sale, said San Diego-based training firm Sales Alliance. To enforce listening skills, the consultancy suggested that account executives frequently make eye contact to indicate that they’re interested in what clients are saying and repeat important points to reinforce that they’re picking up on what matters. The firm also advises sellers to ask questions that elicit more than just a “yes” or “no” answer.
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Cable is at the forefront of a move to marry television advertising with databases that could make it easier for advertisers to get messages in front of specific types of viewers they’re targeting, according to executives speaking at a Jan. 7 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show panel. Panelists described the TV-meets-data evolution as a powerful way to blend targeting attributes of Internet advertising with the persuasive appeal of living-room television. “The ability to connect to databases that exist is powerful … more powerful than the Internet,” said Starcom USA senior vice president and video-innovations director Tracey Sheppach. Comcast Spotlight senior VP, new-business development Warren Schlichting said cable providers are doing
their part by working together to establish a common platform for televising targeted advertising with “one order and one invoice across all equipment.”
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Injecting Interactivity into Cable Advertising
John Hoctor
VP, Business Development and Marketing
Navic Networks
As a founding partner of StartingPoint, a venture-capital firm that did business with tech start-ups, Hoctor tried to identify promising applications of technology. Now he’s working for a company that may be figuring some of it out. Massachusetts-based Navic Networks is carving out significant presence in cable’s local-ad-sales community as a provider of interactive-advertising technologies that let advertisers go beyond exposure over a traditional 30-second sliver of time. Here, he talks about how it’s working.
Q: How are MSOs incorporating viewer-interactive elements to win business?
A: The basic idea is that on top of the 30-second or 60-second unit, you can layer on overlays that have interactivity, so that you can present targeted offers and invite viewers to act upon them. Time Warner Cable, Bright House [Networks], Charter [Communications], Cox [Communications] and a lot of folks out there are making this happen on the local level. They’re going out to local retailers and presenting them with an offer that’s different from what the local broadcasters are able to offer.
Q: What’s a typical response mechanism or deliverable from the advertisers?
A: Mail-back devices are very common. Every day, we’re processing thousands of these leads. You might request a coupon to get a discount off an oil change or brakes. We’ve also done things like have the local auto dealer call me because I’m interested in that particular car, or get a test drive of a new car that’s coming out.
Q: Are cable operators prepared to handle this sort of adjunct to their video business?
A: More so now. Back in 2002, when we first started doing this stuff, it definitely took some people by surprise as to how many people clicked on these things. You have to be prepared with enough brochures to send out, or coupons, or enough people to make a follow-up phone call upon request.
Q: What sorts of response rates do operators typically see?
A: I hate to say it depends, but it does. It definitely comes down to the offer: If you put up an offer that’s not attractive, you’re not going to get people to respond. But if it’s getting $100 off tires, those are attractive offers, and they make sense. When you do like offers across mediums, interactive television does really well.
Q: Navic also has gained attention recently for a new cable-advertising-targeting system that’s being used by Cox in Southern California. What are its origins?
A: We were kind of looking at what we had built a couple of years ago and realized that we’re already integrated with the ad inserters, and with the T&B systems, bringing back second-by-second anonymous viewer data … so we were looking at what we had and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be very interesting to sell advertising based on these metered impressions?’
Q: How does it work?
A: Admira is a Web-based system for buyers and planners to log into for program content, budgets, restrictions, how they would like their campaign to perform. The cable operators log in from another side to the same system through their own user interface. They tell us what inventory is available for sale and what the business rules are around that inventory.
Q: There’s so much attention being devoted today to the promise of household-specific targeting, yet Admira doesn’t offer that. Is it an impediment?
A: I agree that household-by-household addressability is part of Nirvana, and there s a lot of value there, but with Admira, we thought we can offer up a system that offers the lowest level of addressability, and today, it’s the zone. Soon there will be switched digital video so that a node will be a few hundred homes, so we’ll kind of keep leveraging as these addressable technologies get deployed out to the field. But currently, the zone is really the currency of the realm.
--Interviewed by Stewart Schley
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Mediacom Snags Share of Iowa Caucus Spending
(Excerpted from a Jan. 4 article on Multichannel.com)
Mediacom Communications’ ad-sales unit took in about 8%-9% of the overall media spend by U.S. presidential primary candidates in Iowa, an increase over 2003-04 and an indication that “spot” cable ad sales were taking a bigger share of the pie from broadcast TV stations.
For More…Network Cable Seen Beating ’08 Ad Growth Average
(Excerpted from an article in the Jan. 7 issue of Multichannel News)
Cable-network TV is among the segments expected to exceed average U.S. advertising-revenue growth of 4.2% in 2008, according to new projections from TNS Media Intelligence. Cable networks are projected to record a 5% increase in ad sales compared with last year, according to TNS. The top gainer, as in 2007, is expected to be Internet ad spending. TNS projected that the sector will grow by 14.4% in the coming year.
For More…Fox News Reprised News-Ratings Leadership in ‘07
(Excerpted from a Jan. 4 article on Broadcastingcable.com)
Fox News Channel again ended a full year as cable’s reigning news-channel ratings leader, while rival networks all shared in overall category gains.
For More…Ad-Delivery Company Vyvx Sold to Former Rival
(Excerpted from an article in the Dec. 31, 2007 issue of Broadcasting & Cable)
Dallas-based DG FastChannel entered a definitive agreement with Level 3 Communications to buy Level 3’s Vyvx ad unit, which delivers commercials both via file-based satellite distribution and traditional “dub-and-ship” tape-based methods.
For More…Coke Extends Exercise TV VOD-Powered Sponsorship
(Excerpted from an article in the Jan. 7 issue of Multichannel News)
Coca-Cola North America extended and expanded a sponsorship presence within Exercise TV, the video-on-demand cable service televised by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Bresnan Communications.
For More…Cable Networks Ring Out ’07 in Fine Ratings Style
(Excerpted from a Jan. 5 article on Multichannel.com)
ABC Family was among cable networks setting new ratings and viewership marks in 2007, according to this scorecard of performance for the year just ended.
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The St. Petersburg Times reports that commissioners of Hillsborough County, Fla., are pressing cable provider Bright House Networks to contribute $150,000 of local advertising to promote the availability of government-access channels on a digital tier. Pressure for the ad campaign comes after the cities of St. Petersburg and Tampa, Fla., sued Bright House for removing the government channels from a basic tier.
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The Financial Post reports that a local-advertising component associated with The Weather Channel’s weather.com Web site contributes to lofty valuations for the company -- with the Web element potentially worth more than The Weather Channel cable-TV network.
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The Sacramento Bee observes that many of the best “TV commercials” of 2007 didn’t appear on television at all, as viral online-video ads gained traction.
For More…
The Winston-Salem Journal reports on plans by several government-run local cable-access channels to introduce sponsorship-style advertising.
For More…
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Karen Marshall was elevated to vice president and general manager of Comcast Spotlight’s northern New England region, including the Springfield, Mass., and Burlington, Vt., markets. Also, Eric Bloom was named VP and GM for Comcast Spotlight in southern New England, responsible for the Hartford/New Haven, Conn., and Providence, R.I., markets.
Cox Media in Hampton Roads, Va., promoted Denise Perry to sales-support account coordinator. She was administrative sales assistant..
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EDITOR:
PJ Bednarski
646-746-6965
cablenewsletters@reedbusiness.com
WRITER/CONTRIBUTING EDITOR:
Stewart Schley
303-721-1599
cablenewsletters@reedbusiness.com
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RB Interactive
1-888-7RBI WEB
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