• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 1, 2004

The Association of National Advertisers has set the second quarter to field a unique, collaborative test of next generation TV advertising applications. The effort, which will actually be comprised of a series of tests of a variety of interactive, addressable and on-demand TV applications involving upwards of 12 national advertisers, is being managed by Hocus Focus, a new media consultancy operated by Mitch Oscar, who recently joined Carat as an executive vice president of its Carat Digital unit.

"The idea is to get the industry to come together and test and then to put the results out into the public domain," Bob Liodice, president-CEO of the ANA, told MediaDailyNews as part of a far-ranging interview that touched on a variety of ANA initiatives (see today's story on the ANA's new blog).

To date, four national advertisers have committed to the project, with another two tentatively confirmed. Ultimately, the ANA wants a dozen marketers covering a range of consumer categories and with unique advertising and communications needs to participate in the collaboration to make it truly representative of the industry. While Liodice did not disclose the participants, Unilever Vice President-Media Services Brad Simmons is chairing the effort.

The project will actually have two phases, says Carat's Oscar: "The first phase is the test beds. The second phase is getting those results and going back into the field and testing again based on those results."

A key component of the effort, which was modeled on the Interactive Advertising Bureau's XMOS studies, will be that all of the information will be shared with test participants, as well as with other ANA members and the advertising community at large.

In fact, Oscar says a big inducement for media partners, cable operators and the technology companies that are expected to participate, has as much to do with the learning they will glean on developing a long-term advertising market structure for advanced TV applications, as it will for short term sales related to the test projects.

He also emphasized that the effort would involve "real dollars" that would be executed as part of integral advertising strategies, not merely to showcase new TV advertising applications. "The goal is to really learn some new things. To review them and share them and then to go back in and test them again."

He said project could extend into a continuous laboratory of field trials, assessments and redeployments.

Liodice and Oscar said it still is too early to outline the actual tests, which will depend largely on the marketers who sign on and the media and technology partners they choose to work with, though Oscar suggested they would likely involve an ample dose of "video-on-demand" and addressable advertising tests.