• by David Kaplan , April 12, 2005

Cox Media, the advertising sales arm of Atlanta-based cable operator Cox Communications, has signed Tourism Australia as a new advertiser for its ad-supported video-on-demand platform FreeZone. The deal includes access to new data on the total number of unique households viewing on-demand content, as well as the total number of views, the average duration of those views, the number of views per ZIP code, the number of views per psychographic profile, and the number of views per day part.

"The ways in which consumers view television have continued to evolve in the digital landscape, and so we're constantly trying to develop new and innovative advertising platforms," said Billy Farina, senior vice president of advertising for Cox Media. "The advertising community has been asking for indices of measurement to gauge the effectiveness of on-demand campaigns, and we recognize that this is key to our success."

Cox claims it is the only cable operator with an on-demand advertising platform offering those specific data metrics.

"This kind of detailed analytics is increasingly important to clients," said one media buyer, who noted that he was not completely versed in FreeZone's new capabilities versus others, such as TiVo's showcase or other cable operators' data collection. "This is the importance of on-demand to the ad industry. We're all searching for who has the most relevant data."

FreeZone is currently available to more than 1.1 million Cox Digital Cable subscribers in San Diego and Orange County, Calif., Las Vegas, Nev., New Orleans, La., Oklahoma City, Okla., Omaha, Neb.; Hampton Roads, Va.; Connecticut; and Rhode Island.