Fused with internets
With technology from Microsoft Ads, NBC Universal will begin selling commercial time on its broadcast and cable TV networks in a way that mimics online advertising sales.
In the past, marketers purchased ad time based on audience numbers — how many people watched a given show. Recent years have made it possible to target in a more granular fashion, tailoring ads specifically to viewers based on age, gender and income, for example.
Online advertising enables still more granular targeting: ads can be terraced based on past behavior, purchasing history, content of interest, location and other data.
The technology NBC will use in tandem with Microsoft ads this layer of demographic data targeting, as well as an automated ad buying process, according to The Wall Street Journal.
It will analyze anonymous set-top box data from satellite and cable companies, and couple that with data from other firms — including purchasing habits, locations and the like. Such data will be updated daily, said founder Chet Kanojia of Navic Networks, a TV ad tech firm that Microsoft bought last year.
For example, a real estate firm could place an ad across a handful of home improvement shows, then Microsoft's technology can serve that marketer other shows that homebuyers/sellers are watching for potential ad placement, regardless of whether the content itself is relevant to real estate.
Unlike past attempts by rivals that have failed, the automated ad sales component will not be auction-based. But President Mike Pilot of Sales and Marketing at NBCU called it an "absolute necessity" to streamline ad sales efforts — in part to give staff more time to develop custom marketing campaigns, including some that weave an ad's wares into a show's storyline.
The internet may not eclipse television as a means of entertainment, but evidence exists that the future of both platforms is a blended one. A recent In-Stat study projects web-to-TV content will appear in 24 million homes by 2013. And companies like Ace Metrix are using merits of the 'net — its speed and efficiency, for example — to measure the effectiveness of TV ad creative.
