• by Wayne Friedman , April 7, 2008

Media agency Starcom MediaVest Group and Comcast Spotlight, the advertising selling arm of Comcast Cable, have agreed to expand an addressable TV advertising trial to the Baltimore area.

Already the two companies have been engaged in a test of addressable advertising in Huntsville, Ala., in December 2006. That test involved eight cable networks where different groups of households were targeted in the delivery of thousands of ads.

SMG agency clients involved in that test included General Motors, Discover Card, Hallmark, Kraft Foods, Mars, Miller Brewing Company and Procter & Gamble.

The companies said the Huntsville trial delivered 56% more efficiency, and homes receiving addressable advertising tuned away 38% less of the time available than homes that received non-addressable advertising.

The Comcast test did what experts say addressable advertising should do: target specific types of households for specific ads.

Comcast has been offering zone advertising based on ZIP code, but the test delivered different ads within the same commercial break to different household groupings, based on specific demographics and particular advertiser segments. Comcast insists that no personal household information was used to place the ads.

Comcast used Experian Marketing Services to segment the market and match messages. Technically, OpenTV's SpotOn system was employed for the switching of video ads to set-top boxes. Reports and analysis came from Comcast and Starcom's research partner TNS Media Research.