Portland, Oregon-based business intelligence company, Rentrak (note: in the interactive TV space, the company is best known for OnDemand Essentials, a Web-based ASP service which measures and reports anonymous, aggregate VOD usage data, such as viewership volumes and trends, and which is intended to provide cable operators, content providers and advertisers with customizable reports designed to help them better understand viewers’ VOD content preferences; the company claims to be "aggregating, collecting and reporting census-level viewer usage data of nearly 60% of the on demand-enabled cable universe," and its customers include 14 MSO’s–among them Comcast, Cablevision and Charter), has promoted Ken Papagan to company president and Cathy Hetzel to president of its Advanced Media and Information Division (AMID). As president and chief strategy officer, Papagan will continue to work with the company’s chairman and board to set its strategic direction, and will also lead new business initiatives in cross-platform reporting, analytics and the acquisition of independent data. Initiatives he is currently involved in include developing new audience-measurement services for linear TV advertising and programming, as well as for cross-platform video usage. As president of the AMID, Hetzel will have full operating and financial accountability for that division, and will be tasked with driving revenue for the company’s Entertainment Essentials suite of services. Papagan and Hetzel are credited by the company with leading its move into the VOD audience measurement space: "Ken and Cathy have been integral to Rentrak’s success in building our reputation as a premier media measurement and information services corporation across multiple delivery platforms," Rentrak CEO, Paul Rosenbaum, said in a prepared statement. "Their leadership and strategic thinking has led to Rentrak’s seminal role in developing on-demand measurement and laid the strategic foothold for the company’s expanding analysis of cross-platform consumption of entertainment content."
According to Rentrak, Papagan–an interactive TV veteran who, among other things, was involved in the pioneering QUBE project in Columbus, Ohio–has 30 years of experience with major media and entertainment companies, and has focused primarily on digital media for the past 10 years. He joined Rentrak in 2002. Hetzel, meanwhile, has 26 years of experience in the cable industry, and joined the company in 2004 to lead the development and launch of OnDemand Essentials. Her team is currently conducting a beta trial of a new OnDemand Essentials module, called AdTraker, which, as its name suggests, is designed to measure on-demand advertising.
Originally Published: May 30, 2007 in [itvt] Issue 7.32 Part 1
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