Commentary

Horizontical Networks: An Elastic Impression by Admira, Google, Invidi, & TiVo

When I started my career in the media business at ad agency BBDO in the national buying and programming department, around the mid-'70s, the media community's attention was focused on reach. Mass reach. Broad reach. Television. Network television. The cult of the horizontal. Three broadcast networks. Some black and white syndication. TV "upfronts" concluded no later than late May's Memorial Day. The term "network" referred to the broadcast network, a relationship between a corporate entity, such as an ABC, CBS and NBC, and a group of TV stations (owned & operated and affiliates) who shared star studded programming (entertainment, news, sports), monetary compensation and national commercial inventory during specific time periods or dayparts throughout the day (early morning, daytime, fringe news, primetime, and latenight).

By the late '70s local TV stations across the U.S. - those not affiliated with a broadcast network - banded together to form an independent television "network" called Operation Primetime, whose strategy was to offer original made for television movies that would be broadcast quarterly and feature well known but not top tier commercial talent in order to usurp national advertising dollars.

In the early to mid-'80s emulation expanded beyond the limits of its reflection as cable co-opted the vertically magazined approach and injected it with horizontal modifications. From the seeds of Community Antenna Television (CATV) - planted in the late 40's to overcome the limitations of distance and mountainous terrains that blocked over the air broadcast signals coupled with the advent of satellite delivered TV programming - grew the delivery of demo centric-ed and programmed niche cable networks offering steady diets of gyrating, scantily clothed long legged music video-ed girls, 24/7 sports, theatricals without commercial breaks, arts & entertainment, discoveries and CEO targeted news. The cable networks sought and won their niche psychos and demos. I remember vividly arriving one early morning at the Bristol Myers office, where I was employed as a national utility media buyer and creative programmer - some of my plays were enjoying Off, Off Broadway runs - to find our media director beside himself after discovering that someone at the USA Cable Network headquarters in Connecticut had forgotten to throw the central office programming switch at 6:31am and therefore the network was still airing pornography from the night before instead of the general entertaining family fare sponsored by Bristol Myers.

Concurrently, with the proliferation of fledgling cable networks, a somewhat nebulous "network" concept whirled into the marketplace as some potent TV stations in major markets (Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles), now referring to themselves euphemistically as "Super Stations", adopted satellite technology, following the HBO model, to beam their programming signal across the country in hopes of accruing national advertising dollars.

By the early nineties the local TV station "unwired network" Hydras had re-emerged having shed disreputable practices and proffering advanced trafficking and billing systems, planning analytics and a variety of programming and demographic packages whose flavors included dayparts (prime access, late fringe, news, morning, and daytime), genres (comedy, drama, news, talk shows) and specific prime access program "networks" i.e., syndicated Seinfeld inventory from across individual U.S. markets to rival NBC primetime network's national coverage that was re-packaged to sell to national advertisers.

In the first decade of the 21st Century as the televisual universe has expanded and video is much more prevalently experienced across all static and mobile TV platforms (traditional TV, broadband, wireless) we have entered the "horizontical network" epoch. Snuck up on me too. I first witnessed this phenomenon when salespeople - particularly start-ups - presented their pitch in what first appeared to me as contradictory parallels. Vertical and/or horizontal reach. Program or unique impression. Some illustrations:

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  •     Social video networks, such as NextNewNetworks and For Your Imagination, have built their video brands by discovering meaningful social networking communities and generating video programming that is attractive to that audience. Oftentimes they will discover their program hosts, champions and content within that community. Once they have established a foundation within the communal vertical they forge ahead to generate another vertical of loyal socialists that have similar characteristics (age, wealth, education, hobbies) but are drawn to different subject matter. In their sponsorship proposition to the marketer they stress the value of their vertical i.e., males that watch boxing, as well as the value of their horizontal i.e., males that watch their boxing programs, males that watch their basketball programs, males that watch baseball programs, and package it all together: niche and broader reach unique audience synthesized into one package.


  •     Addressable media companies Navic and Invidi have evolved internal corporate value propositions that travel down opposite roads simultaneously - though only at first glimpse. When I first started utilizing Navic's interactive TV applications it was to send the appropriate message (banner overlay on video commercial) to zip codes, and most recently in a select group of markets, to individual households. I was able to match the technology with Acxiom's segmentation analytics and provide what I hoped was the most relevant messaging to a particular household. The vertical approach worked for me. Eighteen months ago, Navic introduced its Admira ad auctioning product which drills down into the individual set top box program usage and is able to sell, through auction, specific programs delivering video commercials to specific set top boxes within a cable zone (a gaggle of zip codes) as well as aggregate those STBs with similar program viewing characteristics to create a broad reach of a narrow demographic i.e., the horizontal.


    Invidi, which has been commercial trialing in Comcast's Baltimore market with satcasting and telco expansion on the horizon, has a similar but different approach. Their technology delivers specific video commercials to households with specified characteristics. These characteristics can be determined by partnerships with dataminers, marketer's loyalty databases or their fuzzy mathematics. In fact, Invidi has said on occasion that it doesn't matter what program is being viewed, they know the broad psychographics of those watching and have the ability to deliver the appropriate video commercial. That's the vertical. However, in the same breath they have hinted at a model in which they partner with a pay TV operator (cable, satellite, telco) to sell commercial time in an accumulation of audience ratings to rival local TV stations. As an example, in a given market the broadcast TV station delivers on average a 5 rating during a particular daypart, whereas the average cable operator delivers a .5 rating per network for the same daypart. The Invidi horizontal solution: aggregate enough local cable inventory to equal a 5 rating, offer competitive pricing and increase the local cable operator's market share.

  •     Google TV Ads auctioning platform enables advertisers and their agencies to seek those audiences that support their marketing needs by creating a "network" of relevant impressions. Google offers the traditionally horizontal reach approach to acquire commercial inventory in a broad range of networks (dayparts and programming mix by network) that are represented in their DISH roster (14 million households) as well as individual national cable networks such as Bloomberg, Hallmark and NBC cablers. However, rather than be limited by the broad horizontal landscape, Google can offer a vertical network approach by delving into demographic and pyschographic analytics to generate inventory schedules by program regardless of its network affiliation - providing, of course, that the inventory is available. In other words, a horizontical approach of chasing program audiences that provide meaningful impressions.


  •    Digital video recorder TiVo has often claimed that their audience is unique - an aggregation of early adopters, psychos and loyalists creating a network that provides greater engagement with an advertiser's customers and potentials. Their interactive TV messaging applications allow the media community to maximize reach through tagging of traditional TV commercials as well as telescoping and request for interaction opportunities; and their Gold Star proposition (more text, graphics and video gatekept through the TiVo menu) exploits TiVo-ists receptivity and connectivity to all things TiVo - a unique vertical across a broad horizontal.


    So where are we. The first decade of the 21st Century has expanded the "network" concept through broadband and mobile video platforms, both sociable and demography, whether through program syndication and like-contented site context as well as migrating models of ad auctioning of programs, networks and impressions utilizing advanced analytics to the traditional TV realm. All in the throes of garnering communal support but hindered by turf wars between agency personnel as analog approaches are slowly superseded by digital efficiencies.

    Welcome to the horizontical.

  • 2 comments about "Horizontical Networks: An Elastic Impression by Admira, Google, Invidi, & TiVo ".
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    1. Sheldon Senzon from JMS Media, Inc., August 11, 2009 at 3:55 p.m.

      Great article, thanks for the ride down memory lane along with a clear look at where we are today. Who would have thunk it, from a 90% share of the viewing audience, networks today scurry to attract audiences the size of the old line radio networks. All this localism is terrific, it's truly a marketer's dream come true. Not sure if we need message delivery by individual household but we're much better now than we were just a few years ago when "birds of a feather" was considered a big deal in targeting messages to prospects.

    2. Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, August 11, 2009 at 4:58 p.m.

      Cheers to the huts and puts!

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