• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 14, 2006

In a move believed to be an industry first, a major cable network cut a deal last week that will provide advertisers and agencies with an usual kind of added value: proof that their commercials actually ran. As part of its 2006-07 upfront advertising deals, spunky cable network Court TV will provide advertisers and agencies with fool-proof electronic verification that spots in their advertising schedules ran as ordered. The deal with Verance, one of several verification services offering so-called digital watermarking technology, is the latest twist in Court TV's core sales proposition to Madison Avenue: that buys on the cable channel deliver a greater return on investment (ROI) than buys on other TV outlets.

The new proof of purchase element is part of a broader proof of performance push Court TV has been making with big agencies and advertisers, and is sure to resonate with corporate marketers who are being held to greater accountability standards by their internal compliance departments. It also is something that should specifically improve the ROI on TV advertising buys for advertisers competing in critical time-sensitive categories, such as retail, automotive and movies, where ensuring that spots ran within certain time-compressed windows is essential to the media plan.

"The motivation for our entire ROI initiative has come from just listening to our clients and their need to prove that television works and that they get what they paid for," explained Charlie Collier, executive vice president-general manager of advertising sales at Court TV.

Last year, Court TV formed a so-called ROI Council, comprised of top media agency executives to learn what they mean by ROI and to develop standards for delivering it. That initiative led to several unprecedented upfront advertising deals with big media shops that were tied guarantees to at least some form of audience engagement measure. Four agencies participated in those deals - Carat, Magna Global, Mediaedge:cia and Starcom MediaVest - and based on their outcome, Court TV expects to do more of them during its 2006-07 upfront negotiations.

Collier says the verification service is an extension of that, noting, "We're going beyond the numbers and looking at unit verification - not just that they ran, but that they ran in a timely way and when they were originally scheduled."

The deal is also a boon for Verance, which has been an also-ran in the verification marketplace to Audio Audit, a firm that has made greater inroads on Madison Avenue, and which last year was acquired by Nielsen Media Research. Medialink's Teletrax unit also competes in the space, and while it has yet to sign any major full-service or general media shops, it recently cut a spate of deals with some direct response specialists, including COREmedia, which provides advanced analytics to direct response agencies and advertisers. The push for verification has always been important for time-sensitive and direct response categories, but became a corporate imperative for many corporate marketers in the wake of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and greater corporate compliance.

Debbie Reichig, senior vice president-sales strategy at Court TV, who negotiated the deal with Verance, says electronic verification also provides a tacit value to the agencies Court TV works with, because they often spend an "inordinate amount of time, including the time of senior level people" resolving discrepancies when commercials don't run as ordered, and when ad schedules don't match their invoices. She noted that this has become a major push of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, which will address such "eBiz for media" issues at its annual Media Conference March 1-3 in Orlando.

The deal also is the latest example of enterprising cable networks coming up with unique values to differentiate themselves from the pack and to proof that they deliver a bigger bang for the buck. Late last year, Weather Channel dug deep, shelling out seven-figures to license Nielsen's new minute-by-minute audience data, which it will provide to its advertisers and agencies to help them understand what their commercial audiences are like.