• by John Capone , January 5, 2010

Hulu hooping across platforms

When it made an upfront-style deal with Hulu, MediaVest moved millions of dollars out of broadcast and into the digital space for such old-line clients as Procter & Gamble, showing the confidence to make industry-leading moves, with the scale and means to pull them off in meaningful ways. And it has paid off.

Our entire model in marketplace activation is integrated from an analog and digital perspective," says Bill Tucker, CEO, MediaVest. "We've organized our talent to be capable in both with our Cross-Athletes program ... so we are organized to move fast."

Tucker credits the Truth and Design practice and other initiatives meant to maintain flexibility and digital competence in planning across MediaVest with keeping clients moving forward with deliberate speed.

The decision to move dollars works for each client that's participating, against their specific communication needs and goals in the marketplace," says Tucker. The Hulu deal didn't just make MediaVest clients first ones in, but gave the very real benefit of giving them more granularly targeted audiences than they'd have gotten buying the same content on broadcast. "One of the components of the upfront is to be able to do exchanges on more discrete audiences, which is common in the digital space, but less easy in the analog space," says Tucker.

Smarter targeting, expanded metrics and the opportunity to test new ad experiences and their effectiveness - these are all critical ingredients for unlocking the full potential of online video and key drivers of this partnership," Amanda Richman, executive vice president of digital operations at MediaVest, told MediaPost at the time the upfront was announced.

Using the clout of the VivaKi nerve center, which is the number one buyer of digital media in the world, coupled with its in-house digital talent MediaVest has blazed a trail of innovation in digital strategy and planning.