Yet another deal in the drive to offer addressable television advertising to marketers has been announced. Google TV Ads will team with Visible World, whose software allows advertisers to change ads depending on demographics, offering an ad for a minivan to households with children, for example, and sedan ad to households without children.
Viacom, Time Warner and WPP are investors in Visible World, the Wall Street Journal reports (via MediaBuyerPlanner).
A number of companies are committed to offering advertisers the opportunity to reach consumers on a household level. Dish Network plans to deliver addressable, targeted national and local television advertising down to the household level via Invidi and GroupM later this year or early next, sources say. DirecTV also signed with Invidi to deliver local ads by playing pre-recorded ads from the DVRs of DirecTV subscribers. DirecTV's initiative will launch in January 2011.
DirecTV already offers hyper-local ads through some regional sports networks, via partnerships with cable entities NCC and Comcast Spotlight, but the new system would be a significant improvement that would be available across DirecTV’s broader base of channels.
Meanwhile, Canoe Ventures, the project headed by David Verklin that allows advertisers to simultaneously deliver ads to homes covered by six cable operators including Time Warner and Comcast, has scrapped its plans to offer an addressable advertising platform in the second quarter of this year.
Addressable advertising has been something cable companies have been promising advertisers for years. A major challenge to delivering on the promise is scale. Marketers need to reach large groups with a single campaign, but it is difficult to buy addressable TV advertising on a meaningful scale when different cable companies offer competing technologies.
In a report (pdf) published in May, Magna defines addressable advertising as part of "advanced TV advertising," which includes video-on-demand, request for information (RFIs), long-form showcases, DVR advertising, interactive program guide advertising, creative versioning, and advanced trafficking systems. The report says that advanced advertising will remain virtually flat in 2009, followed by double-digit growth in 2010 - to $168 million - as infrastructure and inventory come together.
