• by Wayne Friedman , March 7, 2011

Making major headway in addressable advertising, agency Group M and Cablevision Systems Corp. said they have made an industry first -- the simultaneous delivery of advertising from five different advertiser brands sharing a single 30-second commercial across nearly 3 million New York city area homes.

Cablevision has been making a major push in this area, previously handling more than a dozen addressable campaigns involving major brand marketers and their agencies. With the Group M deal, the companies said this marked the first household TV addressable campaign to utilize Cablevision Systems' entire New York City-area footprint.

Each of the five brands participating in the effort (the marketers were not disclosed) received separate post-media metrics, showing how the targeted spots performed with each segmented audience's actual commercial ratings. The five-brand campaign ran in the fourth quarter of 2010, with commercials directed to TV homes based on likely relevance. The messaging ran across more than 25 cable networks.

Irwin Gotlieb, GroupM's chief executive officer, stated: "This is an important win for the entire industry ecosystem because advertisers get better targeting, consumers get more relevant messages, and media companies create more valuable inventory. The fact that major advertisers are now using these advanced targeting capabilities signifies a seminal shift towards broader adoption."

David Kline, president and COO of Rainbow Advertising Sales Corporation, the advertising sales arm of Rainbow and Cablevision, added: "Household addressable advertising provides Cablevision's marketing partners with value, efficiency and effectiveness -- delivering the right messages to the right consumers."

Cablevision uses technology from Visible World to deliver addressable advertising.