• by Wayne Friedman , March 7, 2011

National cable spot advertising rep NCC Media has now formalized its new local TV sales effort. Now called "I+" (Interconnected Plus), it adds millions of customers from satellite and telco operators for TV marketers.

The new ad sales push also riffs on the first letter of the word "Interconnect" -- those market-wide cable advertising selling groups that can connect many individual cable systems in a given market.

In marketing materials distributed on the eve of the American Association of Advertising Agencies Transformation 2011 event, NCC is offering national spot advertisers "integrated reach in the best cable programming to millions of additional TV homes in dozens of markets."

"I+" will begin in mid-2011, with many markets coming on in late 2011/early 2012.

This is part of the process that the former National Cable Communications started in 2007 when it added local ad inventory from various satellite and telco operators. The goal was to compete with TV stations and national spot TV sales organizations for TV marketers' national spot budgets. In 2007, NCC began adding inventory from Verizon FiOS in many markets, which will climb to 25 markets this year.

More recently, NCC then announced it would sell local spots for DirecTV on 25 cable networks. This has added 5 million homes to NCC's lineup. The company says this allows it to increase penetration in specific markets: Los Angeles (29%), Atlanta (23%), Phoenix (32%), Dallas (31%), Houston (25%), and Denver (29%).

Most recently, AT&T U-verse systems were added to the NCC mix. NCC Media now reaches more than 80 million, cable, telco and satellite homes, amounting to 200 million consumers. NCC Media is co-owned by Comcast, Cox and Time Warner Cable.

It sold approximately $1.2 billion cable TV spot revenues in 2010 revenues.

In January, NCC Media hired marketing/ad agency Cramer-Krasselt to develop product positioning, branding and trade-focused advertising in support of its expanding local-market TV advertising.