• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 17, 2009

Dave Morgan, who helped spark a revolution in behaviorally-based audience targeting online, went public Wednesday with his plans to do something similar for television. Morgan, who sold pioneering behavioral targeting firm Tacoda to AOL in 2007 for $275 million, told TV and advertising executives attending one of MPG's Collaborative Alliance meetings in New York how his new venture Simulmedia, will help programmers, distributors, advertisers and, ultimately, viewers, manage an ultra fragmented television marketplace.

"All you have to do is watch television to know that it has a discovery problem," Morgan said, describing the phenomenon as "eye-glazing," and asserting, "this problem is getting worse, not better."

At its current rate of "fragmentation," Morgan estimated that the number of TV programming options is growing "five times faster" than the "attention" viewers pay to the medium.

"It is virtually, if not absolutely impossible for viewers to know all of the programming that is available for them today to enjoy," Morgan said, equating television's "discovery" problem with what happened with the Internet's explosion of content during the 1990s.

Morgan noted that the average clickthrough rate for an online banner was a relatively healthy 4% in 1996, and said that applying enhanced targeting techniques to on-air promo spots for TV programs can now generate conversion rates that are similar or better than that.

"On-air program promotions presented to people on the basis of general interest today is delivering a response rate of about 4% or sometimes as much as 10%," Morgan said. "It's not like the banner ad of 1996. It's better than the banner ad of 1996."

Morgan, who is a regular contributor to MediaPost's "Online Spin Board," and will host next week's OMMA Global conference in New York, said a "team of scientists" working for Simulmedia have spent the past "eight to nine months" analyzing aggregate set-top TV viewing data, and have developed methods for dramatically improving the way TV programmers target potential viewers with their promo spots.

He said on-air promos currently are the primary way that consumers currently decide what programs they are going to watch, and that if they are not exposed to a promo, it is unlikely they will watch a show. Based on Simulmedia's current targeting techniques, Morgan said TV programmers generate an average 62% life in the response rate of "core" vs. non-core audiences.