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April 15, 2008
- Top Story: NCC Campaign Goes Green
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Great Ideas
- BANKING ON BOOMERS
- COMCAST TRIAL GROWS
- A GOOD SHOW
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Briefing Room
- Discovery’s Agent of Change
- Ad Industry Urges Moderation
- Univision Uses Nielsen Homescan
- Yahoo To Handle Ad Sales For MLB.TV
- Arizona Shoots Down ‘Blame The Messenger’ Bill
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NCC Campaign Goes Green
National Cable Communications and its MSO partners have launched ever°GREEN, a pro-social, eco-friendly initiative that can be used by national spot, regional and local advertisers wanting to push their “green” initiatives as well as their products and services. “As an industry we have joined together to develop and implement a unified promotional campaign that focuses on this important cause,” said NCC spokesman Lori Givens. For more...
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BANKING ON BOOMERS: Baby Boomers’ buying power is staggering and their numbers growing every day. Marketing to Baby Boomers is essential to any marketing plan, says John Barker of Advertising Age. Indeed, while that message has been echoed for years now, advertisers and marketers are finally waking up to the largest and wealthiest demographic group in history. Of course, while there are fortunes to be made by attracting this group, there are also pitfalls to avoid, Barker wrote in an April 4, 2008 column. They may be the Holy Grail of target markets, but they're also a tough sell. These savvy, sophisticated, self-reliant fifty- and sixtysomethings are collectively sour on advertising and, just like they were 40 years ago, they remain cynical of
authority, he wrote. Some 75% of boomers believe their best years are ahead of them. Sixty-five percent like to be connected by phone, email and/or IM at all times. In the past three months, 15% of boomers have blogged.
Advertisers and marketers need to stop treating boomers like the retirees of yesteryear. In many ways, they are far more vital, optimistic, vibrant and pro-active than the browbeaten, middle management Gen-Xers or ambivalent, entitled Gen-Yers.
Barker suggest advertisers celebrate Boomers’ generation. Don’t preach and don’t push. Rather, give them ways to find out more about an advertiser’s product.
COMCAST TRIAL GROWS: Comcast Spotlight and Starcom MediaVest Group are expanding their addressable TV advertising deal with a trial set to launch in Baltimore during the third quarter. The initial trial in Huntsville, Ala., showed that Comcast could deliver thousands of ads across eight cable networks, addressed to different anonymous groups of households based on general characteristics selected by the trial’s participating advertisers. Comcast has been offering zone-based advertising, but this was the industry’s first significant effort to deliver different ads within the same commercial break to different household groupings, based on demographics and advertiser segments, but not personally identifiable information, in the interest of
increased ad relevance. The trial was intended to illustrate the effectiveness and efficiency of addressable advertising. Experian Marketing Services assisted Comcast in segmenting the market and matching relevant messages to groupings of households. Addressable advertisements were delivered with the support of OpenTV’s SpotOn advertising solution, which allows for seamless switching of video ads to aggregated groups of set-top boxes. The trial revealed that viewers who saw ads directed to households within a particular group were less likely to change channels. Comcast and SMG found that, overall, homes receiving addressable advertising tuned away 38% less of the time available than homes that received non-addressable advertising.
A GOOD SHOW: An effective sales presentation is essential to gaining the attention and buy-in from potential clients, according to John Windsor, a columnist for Sales & Marketing Management and president of Creating Thunder, a Boulder, Colo.-based communications training and consulting company. He suggests presenters address their clients’ interests at the start of any presentation and make it clear that the meeting about their needs, interests and goals. Give them an image of how their business can be improved by using your company’s products and services. Every presentation should have a specific objective—to close a deal, to lock in a partnership, to win approval for a new project, Windsor wrote. Make it easy and logical for them
to take the next step and they will, he said.
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Praebius Communications has filed a patent application for Addige.net, which the company said uses a proprietary technology that allows it to operate in cable systems that have not been able to insert ads locally before. Ad Systems Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Praebius Communications, installs the equipment, sells the commercials, and shares the revenue with the cable system.
"The roll out of our first 100,000 subscribers in the USA with our new product Addige.net has been like a super-beta test, deployed without a flaw. At present we are capturing nearly half a million commercial avails per month. The next and most important task for the company, our partners, and our shareholders is the selling of our ad inventory,” said Bob Hall, Praebius Communications chairman and president of Ad Systems Inc., in a prepared statement.
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In The Spotlight
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Kevin Cuddihy
Senior Vice President, Ad Sales
Comcast Spotlight |
Kevin Cuddihy is senior vice president ad sales for Comcast Spotlight and has direct responsibility for the company’s five advertising sales divisions as well as Vehix, which Spotlight recently acquired. Cuddihy joined Comcast Spotlight in 2001 as vice president/general manager of Comcast MarketLink Detroit, moved into the role of vice president of Spotlight's Midwest division in 2002, and became vice president of advertising sales in 2006. He has more than 23 years of experience, having spent 19 years with CBS and held the position of vice president/general manager of WNDY in Indianapolis and vice president/station manger of Detroit's WWJ-TV from 1994-2000. Like other operators, Comcast is bracing for a lackluster first half of the year as the economy tries to heal itself. A
soft economy helped push down ad sales revenues in the second half of 2007 and that is expected to remain through the first half of this year. But Cuddihy is looking forward to a strong second half of 2008 as the political season heats up and the economy rebounds.
--Interviewed by K.C. Neel
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Discovery’s Agent of Change
(Excerpted from an April 7 story on the Broadcasting and Cable Web site)
Discovery Communications is pitching cost-conscious advertisers the services of its in-house production arm, Discovery Studios, offering to create spots for advertisers who are trying to squeeze more from their ad dollars. Discovery is already making up to eight 60-120-second spots for General Motors that focus on the automotive company's eco-friendly efforts. Those ads will begin running on Planet Green when it launches in June. The spots do not bear Discovery branding or talent. A&E is pitching something similar—“blended entertainment” ads that integrate an advertiser's product into short-form content associated with a program. Others, like AMC, are offering advertisers research tools they can use to measure all networks.
For More…Ad Industry Urges Moderation
(Excerpted from an April 9 story on the Broadcasting and Cable Web site)
A coalition of advertising industry groups cautioned the Federal Trade Commission on April 9 that pressing for too stringent industry self-regulation of behavioral advertising practices could backfire and ultimately harm consumers. The Association of National Advertisers filed comments jointly with nine other trade groups, responding to a FTC staff draft filed in December. Behavioral advertising collects information about past activities of individual consumers online to predict preferences that, in turn, leads to tailored marketing messages.
The ANA coalition said the FTC’s proposal for restrictions does not strike a “balance” between interests of both industry and consumers.
For More…Univision Uses Nielsen Homescan
(Excerpted from an April 9 story on the Broadcasting and Cable Web site)
Univision Communications said it is combining data from two separate Nielsen audience panels to calculate what it said is a return on investment by measuring changes in consumer purchases in connection with ad blitzes. The new wrinkle is integrating Nielsen Homescan data, which use bar-code scanners in households to track shopping, with TV-viewing data. Univision executive vice president of corporate research Ceril Shagrin said the in-home, self-administered system of Homescan captures purchases made in small stores patronized by Hispanics that otherwise would not be tracked, since in-store scanners are mostly in big stores. Univision will also use this “fused” purchasing/ad-spend data from Nielsen to make the case to advertisers that their ad spend is
underweight in the Hispanic demographic.
For More…Yahoo To Handle Ad Sales For MLB.TV
(Excerpted from an April 10 story on the Multichannel News Web site)
Yahoo and Major League Baseball cut a three-year deal that will let Yahoo exclusively manage online advertising for MLB.TV as well as resell subscriptions to the out-of-market broadcasts to Internet users around the world. Yahoo will offer MLB.TV -- which provides live and on-demand access to 2,430 out-of-market baseball games each year -- to fans in 11 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the U.K., Philippines and Germany. The games will be available through a co-branded player on Yahoo Sports and MLB.com.
For More…Arizona Shoots Down ‘Blame The Messenger’ Bill
(Excerpted from an April 9 story on the Multichannel News Web site)
Cable and other content providers successfully lobbied against an Arizona bill that could have made print and electronic publishers liable for the acts of viewers if it was determined that they were inspired to commit a crime due to the content they viewed. The bill was defeated late April 7 in the face of testimony from a variety of trade groups and First Amendment advocates. Even the National Rifle Association opposed the bill for fear gun dealers could be held liable for advertising legal firearms, according to Susan Bitter Smith, executive director of the Arizona-New Mexico Cable Television Association.
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Upfront Bonanza? Some cable network executives are optimistic that increased viewing—partly driven by the Writers Guild of America strike that hobbled the broadcasters—will translate into a bonanza in the upfront advertising market. But buyers note that a once red-hot scatter market has cooled, according to TV Week. And while some ad dollars are likely to move to cable from broadcast, worries about the economy probably will limit spending on both. Many cable networks are spending money in their upfront season to make money as the broadcasters scale back their once-lavish presentations. It’s another step in the evolution of many cable networks, which also are investing unprecedented sums in original programming.
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A Nielsen Drama The wonky game of counting viewers has been a slow and steady one since 1950, the year Nielsen Media Research began to track who was watching all those brand-new TV sets. But now the longstanding leader in audience measurement finds itself in the midst of palpable drama. As consumers flock to video of all sorts in all places, Advertising Age wonders whether TV-ratings kingpin Nielsen can maintain its dominance as the gold standard by which video advertising is priced. The outlook is murky. A raft of upstarts are eager to win over Nielsen's clients, many of them offering marketers measurements based on audience behavior, not just reach and frequency. Of course, Nielsen has taken steps to reposition for the future. It purchased a company to
help it analyze reams of set-top-box data buyers and advertisers say they want; it took over BuzzMetrics, which analyzes and tracks consumer-generated online media; and it acquired Telephia to get data from mobile devices. It also has taken steps to measure video-on-demand usage, is broadening its traditional TV panel and is starting to find ways to measure viewing across TV and the web. For every new field Nielsen tills, however, a competitor is already planting seeds—IAG, Rentrak and TNS to name a few.
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MASN Back In Court The Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, which won the broadcasting rights to both Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals games in 2006 after a legal battle with Comcast Corp., is back in court with the cable carrier, claiming now that Comcast is threatening to block the network from running regional advertisements, according to the Maryland Daily Record. Preventing MASN from having advertising specific to both its Baltimore and Washington markets would cause the network “irreparable harm,” the complaint, filed this month in Baltimore City Circuit Court, said. Comcast is the largest cable provider in the Baltimore-Washington corridor.
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Nielsen Plans To Acquire IAG Nielsen Co. has announced plans to acquire, IAG Research, for $225 million.
IAG, a privately held company that has built a successful business around measuring consumer engagement with television programs, national commercials and product placements, claimed unaudited revenues of more than $35 million for 2007, and said it has a "positive operating income." Its clients include American Express, Toyota, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Chrysler LLC, Procter & Gamble, Verizon, Sprint, Warner Brothers, VISA, Merck & Co., Paramount Pictures and major networks such as ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, ESPN, and TNT/TBS and MTV.
Terms of the deal call for IAG stockholders to receive cash for their IAG shares. Nielsen currently intends to finance the transaction through the issuance of notes, existing facilities and cash on hand. The deal, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to be completed in the second quarter.
The executive team of IAG, which includes many former top Madison Avenue media research gurus, has agreed to join Nielsen following the merger.
For More…
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EDITOR:
George Vernadakis
646-746-7140
cablenewsletters@reedbusiness.com
WRITER/CONTRIBUTING EDITOR:
K.C. Neel
303-721-1599
cablenewsletters@reedbusiness.com
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