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–Launches Addressable Advertising Service for "Fragmented" TV Media

Interactive TV and addressable advertising technology provider, Navic Networks, has launched a service that allows viewers to use their remote controls to request that digital coupons and product information be instantly sent, via SMS, to their mobile phones. The company is touting the service–which is offered as an extension to its addressable advertising solutions–as allowing advertisers to build closer relationships with their customers by combining targeted interactive TV advertising with the portability and convenience of SMS coupons and reminders. The service presents viewers with interactive overlays, during 30- and 60-second linear commercials, that invite them to elect to receive an SMS coupon, a message reminding them of a store’s location, or product information such as an SKU, UPC or model   number. The service can also be used within interactive/on-demand advertising destinations such as real estate listings or used car inventories, Navic says: viewers browsing such long-form content could have data such as the time and location of an open house, or the model and price of a particular car, sent directly to their mobiles. "You don’t have to look any further than the voting during an episode of ‘American Idol’ to see that television viewers are comfortable making the cross-platform jump between TV and their mobile phone," John Hoctor, Navic’s VP of business development and marketing, said in a prepared statement. "By marrying the reach and impact of TV advertising with SMS’ immediacy and portability, Navic has created a powerful new channel for advertisers. Advertisers are not only able reach customers with a rich video message, but also enable customers to take the message with them."

According to Navic, the new SMS coupon/product information service builds on existing Navic technology that allows viewers to request that an advertiser call them, or to request information through email or snail-mail. The company says that the service can be used in conjunction with its HyperCast Network for campaign management and reporting, allowing advertisers and broadcasters to access usage information.

In other Navic Networks news: the company has launched a media placement service, dubbed Admira, that it says optimizes TV advertising by using census-level set-top box measurement data to increase the value of inventory: by efficiently matching advertisers’ desired target audience criteria with media owners’ inventory, the company claims, Admira simplifies the buying process while maximizing targeted impressions and providing advertisers with measurement and accountability. Navic claims that Admira–by placing relevant video across multiple programs and markets within linear or addressable programming, switched broadcast, VOD, and DVR-recorded programming–is the first media placement service to address increasingly fragmented television media. The company’s press release announcing the new service contained the following quote from interactive TV advertising guru, Tim Hanlon of the Publicis Groupe’s Denuo unit (note: for more on Hanlon, see [itvt] Issue 6.90): "As media becomes ever more fragmented and complex, marketers and their agencies desperately need sophisticated tools to help them deliver relevant ad messages to interested audiences. Nowhere is this more necessary than in the fast-niching realm of television, where hundreds of digital channels and countless hours of time-shifted and on-demand content offer seemingly infinite opportunities for advertisers. Admira is a long-overdue solution that gives video advertising planning and buying professionals a fighting chance to keep pace with television’s explosive changes by providing a powerful targeting system that helps lift the effectiveness of increasingly complicated video ad campaigns."

According to Navic, Admira is currently undergoing commercial trials in a number of major markets, where it is interoperating with existing infrastructures and business processes, and providing real-time audience measurement using Navic’s patented data-collection technologies. "The Admira service brings new efficiencies to buying and selling cable advertising," David Porter, VP of marketing and new media at Cox Media, said in a prepared statement. "It provides the MSO increased control over inventory management and optimization, while at the same time offering marketers unparalleled efficacy and accountability. Cable-enabled television is the only platform that can deliver against the current market pressures and with solutions like Admira we’re poised for continued growth and success."

According to Navic, advertisers and their agencies first define the appropriate target-audience criteria, and can then use planning and preview technology included with Admira, together with audience- behavior and real-time viewership data, to optimize their campaigns. The solution matches the defined audience criteria with inventory that yields the highest target-reach efficiency, the company says, and provides the kind of granularity of measurement and accountability commonly associated with Web advertising. Other benefits claimed by Navic for Admira include support for a closed-loop, ROI-based media model that helps agencies and advertisers reduce execution complexity and cost as media become ever more fragmented: the solution, it claims, provides a "practical path" for buying and selling all media formats "including addressable video, as well as DVR and VOD inventory, in an effective and simplified fashion across a unified ad network, while offering a host of features that were previously unavailable, such as measurement, accountability, targeting, and optimization."

Originally Published: October 12, 2007 in [itvt] Issue 7.39 Part 3A

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