Commentary

Behavioral Targeting Comes To TV Ads

by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, September 7, 2011

Companies targeting ads to consumers on TVs based on location, channel surfing activity and more might seem like a futuristic platform to some, but in reality companies offer the service today.

MStar and Channel Island have collaborated to advance TV advertising and applications in set-top boxes. The software supports profiling and geographic targeting for motion video ads. Network operators receive audience measurement and response metrics that includes behavioral information.

Aside from targeted advertising, the MStar system-on-chip (SoC) semiconductor enables premium TV services on the Channel Island box such as video on demand, electronic program guides, widgets, personal video recording, voting, chat and other applications.

The companies tout the applications built into the joint Mstar/Channel Islands solution as having the ability to increase revenue for even small advertisers that have not had the applications to use targeted broadcast ads based on behavior.

And, in the future, what consumers watch on TV will influence the ads they see online. Years ago, Microsoft talked about joining the three screens. Now joining two will become a reality. Flingo has developed an application for Internet-connected TVs, Blue-ray players and set-top boxes that allows content providers and advertisers to take a fingerprint of what's on the TV screen. It sends the information to a server that identifies the content that connects to the person's Web device on the same IP using an API to provide Web pages with content.

Flingo has partnered with heavy hitters such as Samsung, Google, LG, Adobe, Broadcom, Intel, Warner Bros., TV Guide, Showtime, CBS, TMZ, MTV, Fox, blip.tv and others.

behavioral targeting, online, targeting, television, tv

2 comments about "Behavioral Targeting Comes To TV Ads".

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Herb Lair from CUO,Inc., September 7, 2011 at 6:29 p.m.

Behavioral Based Social Media System for the Cable TV Market
Cable has long history of failing to develop 1-1 target marketing. Canoe Ventures (latest MSO venture) was touted as the Holy Grail of targeted advertising and is reportedly less than a success at this stage.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/03/the-56-billion-ad-question/
Excerpt from above link on January, 2011 Fortune.com –
“Advertisers will spend $56 billion putting ads on TV this year,...The cable industry thought it would be a big opportunity too, but its efforts have fallen short. Canoe Ventures, a two-year-old project of the six biggest operators, has launched just one notable product…”
http://www.businessinsider.com/jason-kilar-here-are-my-thoughts-on-hulu-and-the-future-of-tv-2011-2
Excerpt from above link on February, 2011 Business Insider
Identifies advertising market being missed by Cable TV operators
“Advertisers have weighed in heavily on the future of TV, with both their thoughts and their considerable wallets. Advertisers are increasingly expecting to present their advertising messages to just their desired audience…and not to anyone else. For over 60 years, video advertising could only be bought via a TV show’s projected audience, which served as a blunt proxy for a certain target audience. The result has been many wasted impressions and an often irrelevant experience for consumers. In the near future, advertisers will demand the ability to target their messages to people rather than targeting their messages to TV shows as proxies for people.”
The obvious alternative, with the least cost to implement is an independent Cloud CRM solution designed to cross index cable subscriber households with their corresponding social network interests. The current regulatory and privacy issues experienced by cable TV operators gathering unauthorized data from set-top boxes could be minimized, by validating subscriber and even eliminated by essentially having an opt-in plan (provided conveniently by the social media). Access along with profile and interests of households would be controlled by the subscriber’s social media platform of choice. Facebook has high consumer acceptance and could be used for household profiles, product interests, social interests, and viewing entertainment interests. There would be incentives to the subscribers to opt-in including notification and reminder of viewing favorites, Groupon type ads, and specific ads matching interests with infomercial type group discounts and urgency to buy.
The current design of target marketing advertising ventures is fundamentally flawed. They focus on demographics, and fail to identify the individual behavioral current and future household interests.
I would propose using a data cross indexing similar to a data warehouse project I was involved with at iN Demand. http://www.indemand.com/ .
Project would involve developing a bidirectional Cloud interface program using a CRM application between the social media and MSO subscriber records and communicating behavioral marketing - business advertising, discounts, specific videos/groups, family albums – providing subscriber awareness of TV programming -- movies, products, etc. similar to Amazon and Groupon. This would make subscriber stickier and substantially reduce turnover.
To paraphrase a comment I made in the CED 1999 publication about the Internet, cable TV operators need to become the new best friends with the 600 million members of social media.
Reply

Yuval Canfi from Personyze, September 8, 2011 at 3:40 a.m.

I must say I have never heard of flingo before but my first impression is that this could be either very good, or very bad, news for youtube and it's equivalents. One thing I do predict for flingo is that if they are going to provide user data for TV advertisers, they must be very cautious, <href="www.personyze.com">behavioal targeting</a>, even being very effective, still scares a lot of people.

Yuval C.