Showing posts with label The Wall Street Journal. Show all posts

Break YouGov BrandIndex's "Apple fanboy aging" data in The Wall Street Journal

August 9, 2012, 3:22 PM

Apple “Genius” Ads, Though Panned, May Have Special Target

By Ian Sherr

When Apple released its “Genius” ads during the Olympics late last month, some Mac fans were not impressed. But one firm that tracks brand perceptions thinks Apple had good reasons for the campaign.

Unlike Apple’s typical ads these days, which exude cool and show off what their devices can do, these 30-second clips placed an Apple tech support employee from its retail shops in some extreme situations while helping his customers, such as having to create a movie minutes before a plane lands.

Those familiar with other Apple ads were surprised by the more conventional “we’re here to help” approach. A particularly harsh reaction came from Ken Segall, whose LinkedIn profile says he worked for an ad firm on Apple’s “Think Different” campaign.

“These ads are causing a widespread gagging response, and deservedly so,” he said in a recent blog post. He wrote that the company’s previously successful “Mac vs. PC” campaign–in which comedians John Hodgman and Justin Long play-acted a PC and Mac talking to one another–were largely successful because they spoke to would-be customers and galvanized the Mac faithful.
These new ads, in his view, did not. “I honestly can’t remember a single Apple campaign that’s been received so poorly,” he said.

So what was Apple thinking? YouGov’s BrandIndex, a daily tracking and survey service, thinks the answer might lie in shifting demographics.

The service noticed that beginning in May of last year, the popularity of Apple’s brand began to grow among those 35 years old and up. By October, BrandIndex said Apple’s popularity among that demographic had grown to its highest level in at least four years. From early 2008 through mid-July 2011, by contrast, Apple scored higher with the 18-34 age group, the firm said.

The increased popularity among older consumers could have influenced Apple’s decision to put out the “Genius” ads, BrandIndex said.

“It appears that the 35+ demographic, which includes Boomers 50 and over, may need more product hand-holding than the younger group–hence the Genius,” BrandIndex said, adding that Apple’s decision to run the ads during prime-time Olympics coverage, where the audience is easily over 35 years old, made sense as well.

Such a strategy would seem a pretty sharp departure for Apple, which is not known for targeting ads at different audiences. Its print ads for the iPhone 4S, for example, are pretty much the same from publication to publication, and its television ads tend to be the same across any channel they play on.
An Apple spokesman said the company doesn’t discuss its marketing.

Whatever the Cupertino, Calif., tech giant’s thoughts or reasons for running these “Genius” ads in particular, they overwhelmingly succeeded in one way: they got people talking about Apple.

Break NBC Universal's INVIDI investment in Wall Street Journal and Advertising Age

October 4, 2010, 9:00 PM ET

NBC Invests in Targeted TV Ads Business

By Jessica E. Vascellaro

A company that delivers targeted ads to television sets has scored another endorsement.

: Getty Images

NBC Universal plans to announce Tuesday an investment in Invidi Technologies Corp., according to the companies. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. A NBC Universal spokeswoman called the investment “small.”

Google, Motorola and WPP’s GroupM are already investors in Invidi, which targets ads to set-top boxes based on the geographic location of the box and other data.

Ed Swindler, executive vice president and chief operating officer for ad sales at NBC Universal, said the company made the investment to be able to test future advertising models. “We would anticipate doing some testing as soon as it becomes possible,” he says, adding NBC hadn’t worked out any details.

The promise of the technology is big: allowing advertisers to show multiple ads during the same commercial slot. It is the kind of targeting that Internet companies continue to brag they can pull off online but hasn’t been possible in the TV world.

Invidi, along with other technologies companies like Visible World, are trying to change that. But progress has been slow. Invidi was founded ten years ago and has raised around $90 million in financing to date.

Its system works like this: Advertisers specify which audiences they want to reach, like women in the market for a car; then Invidi serves their ad to the set-top boxes of people it believes are likely female car buyers. Invidi can target ads according to gender and age inferred from data about the types of viewers who generally watch a show, without knowing what the show is.

Advertisers can also target users – say customers who have purchased their products recently — based on household purchase behavior from third-party databases. In those instances, television operators permit the data provider to program the set-top box with data specific to each household, like whether there’s a pet in the household or the family frequently travels. When it’s time to run ads, the box “votes” for the most appropriate ad based on how it has been programmed as well as factors such as the time left in the advertisers’ campaign. Invidi doesn’t see the data.

If a commercial slot is a pizza, Invidi can “take that pizza and slice it up in very very small slices,” says Michael Kubin, Invidi’s executive vice president.

The company has landed a few partnerships. Verizon’s FiOS TV service began targeting ads to specific geographic zones through Invidi in March and Dish and DirecTV are planning to start selling Invidi-targeted ads in the first quarter of 2010, Kubin says.

NBC’s investment comes as Comcast is close to closing a deal to acquire control of the company from General Electric– a partnership that could provide some interesting ad-targeting possibilities.

“Comcast has a large set-top box infrastructure that would be helpful to all these technologies,” says Swindler, referring to TV ad-targeting tools in general. But “we have to wait for the merger and see what comes of it.” He says NBC’s decision to invest was made independent of Comcast’s bid to acquire control of NBC Universal, and that NBC hadn’t discussed the company with Comcast.

For its part, Comcast last year tested Invidi’s technology in its Baltimore market through a partnership with Starcom MediaVest Group. The viewers who saw targeted ads were less likely to change channels by about a third when compared to viewers who saw non-targeted ads.

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NBC Universal Invests in Addressable-Ad Concern Invidi

NBCU Wants to "Test" Future Models as Ad Business Grows Complex

by Brian Steinberg
Published: October 04, 2010

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- NBC Universal has made a strategic investment in Invidi Technologies Corp., a company that has developed software that enables marketers to send different commercials to different households via use of a set-top box. The alliance is a signal that TV broadcasters are growing more interested in the technology behind so-called addressable advertising, that could change the way in which media outlets conduct business.

"This is just one in a long record of things we've done with partners and advertisers and third-party technology providers," said Ed Swindler, exec VP-chief operating officer of NBC Universal ad sales, "with the goal of testing the future models for advertising as the environment becomes a lot more complicated, and to learn how the business model is going to change over time."

NBC Universal is the first TV broadcaster to join Invidi's ranks of investors, which also include Google, Experian, WPP and Motorola. NBC Universal and Invidi declined to elaborate on the amount NBC Universal invested or the size of the stake, but indicated the transaction did not make NBC Universal a majority stakeholder in Invidi.

Addressable advertising, in which a single piece of ad inventory can be "split" into multiple spots, each sent simultaneously to a group of households more likely to be interested in the particular message or product being conveyed, has long interested the ad industry. Yet even as the words crop up on executives' salivating lips, actual implementation of the technology seems to bob continually in the distance.

Invidi, which holds several patents for a system that distributes addressable ads and measures response to them, has begun rolling out in different systems, said Michael Kubin, an exec-VP at the company. Mr. Kubin said Invidi has installed software with Verizon's Fios system since March and expects to do the same with DirecTV and Echostar Communications' Dish Network in the first quarter of 2011.

"This is not an easy thing to figure out," said Mr. Kubin. "The technology is hard. There are a lot of barriers to implementation. Putting software into set-top boxes is not easy. There are a lot of barriers, but we have narrowed them down one at a time, and we are getting there."

NBC Universal has demonstrated in the past its interest in testing out new systems of advertising. In September of 2008, the company unveiled a partnership with Google that would allow the search-engine giant to sell pieces of advertising inventory on some of NBCU's cable channels. The theory at the time is that the pact would allow some advertisers to customize their ad plans to reach particular audience segments and also that the agreement might bring new categories of smaller advertisers to TV who might not normally by the medium.

TV broadcasters have reason to investigate the technology. One idea being floated around some ad-buying agencies is to have them buy up addressable inventory from sellers and then allocate it to their clients -- a notion that might upset TV programmers accustomed to controlling the advertising inventory that accompanies their well-known shows.

"Content owners need to make sure that the business model is respected so that we can continue to invest all the money -- the billions of dollars -- we invest in programming," said Mr. Swindler.

The pact with Invidi comes just weeks ahead of when Comcast Corp. is expected to complete its acquisition of a majority stake in NBCU. Comcast has in the past expressed an interest in using NBC Universal's programming to reach broader audiences and get them to test out emerging technologies such as video-on-demand and more. Invidi said its technology was recently tested in Comcast's Baltimore systems, where the addressable ads "proved to be 65% more efficient and 32% more effective."

The Wall Street Journal's "Numbers Guy" gives thumbs up to client YouGov BrandIndex

Online Polling, Once Easily Dismissed, Burnishes Its Image

By CARL BIALIK

Each day, 5,000 Americans fill out an online survey rating corporate brands on such criteria as quality, value and reputation. Their responses are compiled into a daily tracking index that aims to show the ebbs and flows of brand value.

The tracking poll, conducted by U.K. survey company YouGov PLC, has shown how much an automobile recall cost Toyota in reputation, and how long it took to bounce back. Its German arm has made headlines for measuring the deep dive in the reputation of a German fitness-studio chain after its founder's music festival last month ended in a deadly stampede. And BP PLC has used the poll to follow public response to the massive oil spill this year from its well in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a person familiar with the matter. (A BP spokeswoman declined to disclose which measures the company uses.)

Daily tracking polls are becoming a must-have for companies who have suffered blows to their public standing. Online polls are fast, and often less expensive than telephone surveys. But getting measurements quickly on so many companies involves taking steps that could dent the reliability of the numbers.

Those pitfalls, including questions about maintaining a random sample of participants, worry data experts who study survey methodologies. Still, the growing acceptance of Web-based surveys marks a turning point in the polling industry. Until recently, many established pollsters had shunned their online counterparts or said their methods were dubious. Now, some traditional telephone pollsters have begun incorporating online polling themselves.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index, a poll founded at the University of Michigan, until this year conducted surveys exclusively by phone. "We used to think telephone sampling was the way to go," says David VanAmburg, managing director of the index, which now is produced by a for-profit company in Ann Arbor, Mich. But then people started ditching landline phones—one in five households, at last count, were cellphone-only. This spring, ACSI began blending online and telephone polling.

YouGov began tracking American opinion of corporate brands three years ago for its poll, which it calls BrandIndex. (YouGov has conducted polls for U.K. papers the Sun and the Times, which like The Wall Street Journal are owned by News Corp.) Each day, the company sends out enough surveys to members of its one-million-person panel of U.S. adults in order to receive back at least 5,000 completed surveys on 1,100 brands. Each brand is rated by between 50 and 125 people per day, and the results are combined into a single score.

"If you have a crisis or a potential crisis, you can have a sense of, how much of an impact is this having with consumers?" says Ted Marzilli, the New York-based global managing director for BrandIndex.

Other research companies take a different approach to using the Web to monitor corporate reputations. New York firm NM Incite, for example, monitors chatter on blogs and social networks, using automated tools to detect whether comments such as Twitter posts are positive or negative. While some respondents to an online poll might not be customers of the brand they rate, or might not have much influence over others, people who comment on blogs and social-networking sites are likely to have an outsize impact on brands.

A problem, though, is ensuring that the software correctly categorizes online buzz. "That's the hard part," says Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president of digital strategic services for NM Incite, a joint venture of the media-measurement firm Nielsen Co. and McKinsey & Co. "Anyone who claims perfection is misleading you." The company continually updates its algorithm and occasionally has analysts review material, he adds.

Some data experts wouldn't consider YouGov's survey panel, recruited exclusively online, to be randomly chosen. For one, not all Americans have Internet access. Also, polls that recruit participants online favor the heaviest Web users, who are more likely to spot the ads seeking brand raters.

Mr. Marzilli says the company ensures respondents are representative of the overall population by such factors as age and gender. He also questions whether those who aren't online "would view BP or Toyota inherently differently than people with Internet usage." And he pointed to the company's success using similar panels for political polling—for instance, predicting Barack Obama would beat John McCain by six percentage points in the national popular vote for president in 2008. President Obama won by seven percentage points.

Even survey experts who have doubts about the reliability of online polling say it is a useful way of tracking changes in public opinion over time. "There is probably no other mechanism available" for the intensive daily results like those the BrandIndex seeks to generate, says Michael Brick, vice president of Westat, a company that conducts polls for the U.S. government. "If you use caution with the results, you can get something valuable out of them."

BrandIndex's NBC-TV research in Wall Street Journal article

ADVERTISING
MARCH 8, 2010

New Evening Lineup Energizes NBC

Bigger Ratings Provide Momentum, but Ad Buyers Aren't Sure Viewers Will Stay

[EXCERPT]

NBC's evening lineup got a ratings boost in the week after the Winter Olympics, providing much-needed momentum as the network prepares to present potential new TV shows to advertising buyers in a round of meetings this month.

The biggest gains came in the 10 p.m. Eastern time slot, which NBC had scrambled to fill after canceling Jay Leno's poorly performing comedy show early this year, ahead of the Olympics. The network's new shows in that slot include the ensemble drama "Parenthood" and "The Marriage Ref," in which a panel of celebrities weighs in on married couples' everyday tiffs.

On weekdays last week, an average of 8.1 million people watched 10 p.m. shows on NBC, up 57% from the average of about 5.2 million who did so before the Olympics, according to preliminary Nielsen Co. data supplied by NBC.

The network's overall prime-time viewership between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on weeknights was up a more-modest 21%, the data showed...

Meanwhile, it appears that the Olympics may have helped NBC improve more than its Nielsen numbers. BrandIndex, a firm owned by market-researcher YouGov PLC that tracks consumer perceptions of more than 1,100 brands, said that in February the "buzz" surrounding NBC improved most of any brand it tracks. It shifted from a negative view to a slightly positive one. But NBC's overall positive rating still trails somewhat behind those of CBS, News Corp.'s Fox and Walt Disney's ABC.

Land IMG's new "Dog Whisperer" joint venture on front of The Wall Street Journal, followed by Mediaweek & Mediapost

'Dog Whisperer' Hopes to Lead Pack at Newsstand

With New Magazine, IMG and Cesar Millan Join Chase for Ad Dollars From Recession-Resistant Pet-Care Industry

IMG Worldwide and TV's "Dog Whisperer," Cesar Millan, are looking to take a bite out of the growing pet-care market.

In the face of a harsh advertising climate, the New York sports management and entertainment firm is launching a magazine dedicated to dog owners and their pets. The new publication, Cesar's Way, is a joint venture between IMG and Mr. Millan, a dog trainer used by celebrities like Oprah Winfrey. The partners declined to discuss the project's finances.

Inaugural issue of Cesar's Way. A second issue is planned this year and six in 2010.

Cesar's Way, which hits newsstands next week, is filled with slick photos of celebrities such as Mariah Carey, Paris Hilton and Jennifer Aniston with pets in tow. Articles include "Can Your Dog Fix Your Marriage? Just Ask Jada Pinkett Smith" and "7-Day Doggie Detox." IMG says it plans to publish two issues this year and six in 2010.

The magazine is the latest example of TV personalities trying to parlay their popularity into newsstand sales. Mr. Millan, who will be editorial director of the magazine, has starred in National Geographic's popular canine reality series -- think "Super Nanny" for dogs -- since 2004.

Some of the magazine industry's biggest hits have been celebrity-edited, says Lee Rosenbaum, vice president of IMG's publishing arm. "Just look at Oprah and Rachael Ray," he says.

But it's a you-know-what world out there. The new magazine joins about 60 other dog-related titles in the U.S., including Dog Fancy, Doggie Aficionado and Urban Dog, according to the National Directory of Magazines.

"Like all publications, it's been a little slow for the past two years," says Norman Ridker, founder and president of BowTie, a privately held publisher of dozens of pet magazines, including Dog Fancy and Dog World.

In addition to its many rivals, Cesar's Way faces the worst ad climate in decades -- one that has forced the closure of such magazines as CosmoGirl, House & Garden and Domino. In the first half of 2009, magazine ad revenue plunged 21% from a year earlier to $9 billion, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

Celebrity-edited magazines, too, have been stung by the downturn. Ad pages in Every Day With Rachael Ray fell 14% for the first six months of the year, while ad pages in O, The Oprah Magazine, slid 29%.

IMG knows firsthand how tough the recession has been. Earlier this year it closed down Tennis Week, which had been around for decades.

Still, IMG and Mr. Millan think they can profit from the 75 million dog owners in the U.S. and the pet industry, which has proved to be somewhat resistant to the recession. Sales of pet food and supplies are expected to increase 2.9% to $27.5 billion in 2009, according to research group Mintel International.

"People have continued to spend on their pets," Mr. Millan says. "You always want to make sure your family is taken care of, and Americans believe the dog is part of the family."

IMG isn't the only company to see dollar signs in the pet market. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia added a pet destination to its Web site this year. Honda Motor introduced an Element with features such as a cushioned pet bed in the cargo area and a pet-restraint system.

Media buyers says it's a tough time to start a new title, but some of them say having a narrow audience can be appealing to advertisers.

"Niche magazines today are more important, because marketers are trying to be more efficient with their ad dollars, and this would be a way for pet food and pet services companies to reach their target audience," says Robin Steinberg, director of print investment at Mediavest, a media-buying firm owned by Publicis Groupe.

The first issue of Cesar's Way includes ads for pet-supplier retailer Petco, Del Monte Foods' dog treats and Halo pet food.

While ad spending on pet food has fallen, it has fared better than other sectors. Ad outlays by pet-food companies slid 5% to $299.2 million in 2008, less than the declines of 15% and 5.7% seen among auto makers and telecom companies, respectively, according to TNS Media Intelligence. For the first three months of this year, spending on pet food ads rose 24%.

The magazine is part of a marketing effort to turn Mr. Millan into a household name. IMG has represented him since 2007, during which time he has written several books, created a popular Web site and produced several dog-training videos.

Almost half of America's consumers already know who he is, and consumers' awareness of Mr. Millan has grown 12% since May 2008, according to Davie-Brown, an Omnicom Group company that tracks the appeal of celebrities.

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Nat Geo's 'Dog Whisperer' Adds Magazine to Portfolio

One area that seems to defy the down market is the money people spend on their pets. And marketers have taken notice, as a growing genre of slick, pet-lifestyle magazines suggests.

The latest to be unleashed is Cesar’s Way, a spinoff of the popular National Geographic Channel’s The Dog Whisperer starring dog behavior expert Cesar Millan. Launching Sept. 15, Cesar’s Way is the first regularly published consumer magazine from IMG, the sports, media and entertainment marketing company behind such events as Fashion Week and its related publication The Daily (and Millan’s rep).

It’s also the latest in Millan’s growing media empire, wh ich includes the show going into its sixth season in October, a line of products at Petco, books and a one-hour strip on Twentieth Television starting in fall 2010.

Cesar’s Way will publish twice in 2009 with a guaranteed circulation of 150,000 and six times in 2010, when the rate base will rise to 250,000. Stories will feature celebrities and their dogs, human-interest tales and dog-training tips.

But don’t call it a dog magazine, said Lee Rosenbaum, vp, publishing at IMG and ex-publisher of the erstwhile music magazine Blender. “We show [people’s] lifestyles and how dogs fit within their lifestyle,” he said, adding, “It’s a bit of a mixed breed.”

Indeed, this new breed of pet magazines considers itself a different animal from the older, less-glitzy pet titles like Dog Fancy and American Kennel Club publications. (That top fashion photog Gilles Bensimon shot the cover of the first issue of Cesar’s Way is bu t one indication.)

“I think we try to transcend that Best in Show stereotype,” Rosenbaum quipped. Other such “dog culture” magazines include The Bark, a six-times-a-year magazine and Modern Dog, a quarterly.

“Dog Fancy, the old, traditional take on dogs, was just basically about service, how to show [and] breed dogs,” said Cameron Woo, publisher of 120,000-circ The Bark, adding that his title “launched a whole wave of pet coverage.”

Such titles are making inroads with not just pet food marketers but blue-chip auto, travel and packaged goods advertisers. The Bark is on track to car ry about 200 ad pages this year including Bissell, Jeep and Subaru with its irreverent coverage (recent topics included the South Korean practice of dining on dog and canine representation in Renaissance painting).

“It has broadened from the traditional advertisers—dog food, accessories, toys and leashes—[from] companies that…carry those things as part of their business to car companies who want to reach out to this demographic,” Woo said.

Similarly, Cesar’s Way is carrying Sketchers, JetBlue and Best Western in its launch issue in addition to Frontline and Del Monte pet food. “The dog is really part of the family, and a caregiver is a caregiver,” explained Rosenbaum. “So if you can engage that caregiver, it’s easy to engage them in talking about the other members of the family.”

Established print media also have taken note of the pet craze.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia this year launched a new pet channel on its Web site and added related content to its TV and radio show and in its magazines Martha Stewart Living, Everyday Food and Body + Soul. Nestlé Purina PetCare was the sponsor.

Also, Hearst’s Country Living has expanded its pet coverage this year under editor Sarah Gray Miller and has seen an uptick in pet advertising. People.com started a pets channel in December to tap into reader interest in celebrities’ pets.

Betsy Baltzer, media acquisition director for Kansas City-based agency Bernstein-Rein, sees a lot of growth in the pet media category, reflecting consumers’ continued spending on their pets.

Yet Baltzer said national publications’ efforts to add pet content don’t a lways succeed. “Some just want to do advertorial sections,” she said. “It’s not as committed. The advantage of the pet enthusiast [title] is you know someone is reading the publication because they truly are a pet enthusiast.”

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National Geographics' The Dog Whisperer

Mag Bag: Dog Whisperer Debuts Pub

Cesar Millan, who has built a media and merchandise empire by getting neurotic dogs to behave, is adding another medium to his media portfolio: print. In partnership with IMG, a sports and entertainment marketing company, Millan is launching Cesar's Way Sept. 15, which will have a guaranteed circulation of 150,000 with two publication dates in 2009.

If all goes according to plan, Cesar's Way will increase its rate base to 250,000 in 2010, when it will publish bimonthly. The launch issue includes natural endemic advertisers like Del Monte's pet food brands, but also human-focused brands like Skechers, JetBlue, and Best Western.

The magazine will cover various subjects pertaining to human-canine relations, including stories about celebrities and their dogs, regular people and their dogs, and dog-training tips. Cesar's Way will also feature lifestyle content focused on how people adapt (or fail to adapt) to dog ownership. The magazine will probably feature the information that makes Millan's show on the National Geographic Channel, "The Dog Whisperer," so fascinating: His almost supernatural understanding and faculty for communicating with dogs.

While it's launching in a difficult environment for consumer magazines, Cesar's Way is banking on Americans' enthusiasm about pet ownership. Indeed, established titles about pets have held up better than other consumer magazines in recent years. From June 2004-June 2009, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Dog Fancy and Cat Fancy have both seen their total circulation hold steady at about 240,000.

Acted as spokesperson for BrandIndex's GM research in The Wall Street Journal

GM Will Hold Ad Budget Steady

Plan Calls for Spending of Up to $50 Million a Month While in Chapter 11

[EXCERPT]
As General Motors prepares to drive out of bankruptcy court, Madison Avenue is breathing easier.

Late last week, the fallen auto maker said it will maintain an ad budget between $40 million and $50 million a month while in bankruptcy proceedings -- much less than in years past, but about the same as in the months leading up to its June 1 bankruptcy filing.

Advertising and marketing firms, which are facing an abysmal ad market, had been anxious about how much GM would spend to peddle its products as it struggled through bankruptcy. It isn't clear when GM will emerge from Chapter 11 protection, though some GM executives and advisers expect it could be a matter of weeks, say people familiar with the matter....

BrandIndex, a firm that tracks consumer's perceptions of more than 1,100 brands, says it has seen a "modest jump" in positive buzz for GM. "The campaign has been far more convincing to women then men" and it is also generating a slightly more positive response with 18- to 34-year-olds than the 35 to 49 crowd, says Drew Kerr, a spokesman for BrandIndex, which is owned by YouGov.

I launch INVIDI's pact with DIRECTV in The Wall Street Journal, Mediaweek, Multichannel News, Mediapost and B&C

DirecTV Will Offer Targeted Ads in 2011

DirecTV Group Inc. is preparing a new service that allows advertisers to reach viewers based on their locations, a significant change for the satellite-television business.

Satellite companies have so far been constrained in their ability to target specific regions -- DirecTV, for example, has mainly east and west broadcast streams.

DirecTV will use software from startup Invidi Technologies to deliver the targeted ads, beginning in 2011. The software can home in on the geographic region of viewers by picking up information from set-top boxes, said Michael Kubin, executive vice president of Invidi Technologies.

"We know exactly where a viewer is located, and to advertisers who want to avoid waste, that makes all the difference," Mr. Kubin said.

The new service will allow DirecTV, which has 18 million subscribers, "to compete for a large slice of the TV budget, which is local advertising," said Tracey Scheppach, senior vice president and video-innovations director at Publicis Groupe's Starcom Worldwide.

Advertisers have been clamoring for more precision and rival cable operators have ramped up their own local ad offerings. At the same time, lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about the privacy implications of ad-targeting technologies. On Thursday, Congress plans to hold a joint subcommittee hearing on privacy and digital advertising. "DirecTV stands ready to work with Congress on addressing any privacy concerns they may have with respect to consumers," a DirecTV spokesman said.

DirecTV is entering local advertising as the segment reels from the recession. Local U.S. ad spending will fall to $94.4 billion in 2009 from $111.2 billion in 2008, according to forecasts from research firm eMarketer.

Still, as growth at DirecTV and its major cable rivals slows, the operators are becoming more aggressive in searching for new revenue streams, said Thomas Eagan, an analyst at Collins Stewart.

The country's largest cable operators have identified targeted-TV advertising, including by geography, as a major future engine of growth.

Canoe Ventures LLC, a joint venture between Com cast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., Cox Communications, Cablevision Systems Corp. and Brighthouse Communications, plans to launch a service that allows advertisers to select geographies.

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DirecTV Sets Stage For Local, Targeted Ads

Satellite Service Inks Deal With Invidi For Set-Top Ad-Insertion Technology

DirecTV has signed a deal to use ad-insertion technology from Invidi Technologies that will let the satellite TV operator for the first time deliver different local ad spots to individual subscriber households.

Currently, DirecTV is working to integrate the Invidi software with its digital video recorder receivers and is aiming to launch the local ad capability in January 2011, said Bob Riordan, DirecTV senior vice president of national advertising and sales.

"It's a tremendous engineering challenge and we have every confidence that this will happen. But there's no short solution to this," he said. "You can't be half-pregnant with this technology."

Dish Network announced a similar agreement with Invidi last fall. The two satellite companies together represent some 31 million set-top boxes, according to Invidi executive vice president Michael Kubin. "We hope there will be a standard everybody works off of, which will make it easier for one advertiser to work across all distributors," he said.

Invidi also has been working in an addressable-ad trial with Comcast, in the MSO's Baltimore market. "Our technology is intended to be platform-agnostic," Kubin said. "We've been speaking with everyone -- satellite, telcos and cable MSOs -- since the beginning."

Today DirecTV can only sell advertising across its national footprint. Using Invidi's technology, the satellite company would be able to s erve individual TV commercials dynamically by region, ZIP code, designated market area (DMA) - or even by subdivision, neighborhood, political district, street or individual household.

"At this point we're a national advertising play," Riordan said. "This lets us for the first time deliver a local advertising solution."

The various TV spots, sold in the local inventory available to DirecTV, will be delivered via satellite to subscribers' DVRs. The Invidi software then determines based on various factors which ad to serve in a given time slot.

Riordan said that by the time DirecTV launches local advertising, more than half of the operator's subscribers will have DVRs in their home, representing somewhere around 20 million boxes.

As for privacy concerns, DirecTV is "highly sensitive to the privacy of our subscribers," Riordan said, noting that targeted ads would be delivered based on anonymized data. "This is a noninvasive platform," he said.

DirecTV plans to overlay geographic information from subscriber se t-top boxes with "reputable" third-party demographic data, according to Riordan, to allow marketers to target ads to specific demographic profiles. "It will take such waste out of advertising," he said. "I'll be getting a Ford commercial, but a household with a 21-year-old may be getting a Jetta commercial."

Initially, the satellite TV operator expects to offer 25% or less of its available i nventory for local, targeted ads, Riordan said. Other details of the business model are "also under discussion," he said, such as whether different advertisers would be able to buy the same avail in different markets.

Invidi, founded in 2000, has received funding from ad agency GroupM, which is a subsidiary of WPP, as well as Motorola, Menlo Ventures, InterWest Partners and EnerTech Capital.

"Individual household advertising solutions have for decades been the holy grail of marketers and media professionals," GroupM CEO Irwin Gotlieb said in a state ment. "We hope this is an early step in the establishment of a common ecosystem f or the television industry's delivery of advanced advertising products."

On the cable front, Canoe Ventures - a consortium of the U.S.'s six biggest MSOs - is working toward delivering Community Addressable Messaging, a service that initially would allow advertisers to show a different version of an ad to viewers in high-income areas. Rainbow Media's AMC is currently testing that service with Canoe.

Separately, Cablevision Systems this summer is expanding its addressable-advertising capabilities to deliver TV spots based on an individual subscriber's demographic data to some 500,000 households across the New York metro area, using technology from Visible World.

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DirecTV to Serve Up Targeted Ads

mw/photos/stylus/66728-TVwithMoneyInItM.jpg

In a deal that will allow DirecTV to serve up local advertising, the satellite TV operator announced Wednesday that it will begin deploying software developed by the GroupM-backed Invidi Technologies Corp.

The agreement follows a similar arrangement that was hashed out between the addressable-advertising software company and DirecTV rival DISH Network. That deal was announced in November 2008.

Once the Invidi software goes online––DirecTV will upload the program to its subscribers’ digital set-top boxes––the operator will be able to insert local advertising, allowing marketers to target a sedimentary band of targets, ranging from DMA to zip-plus-four to individual households.

Under the new targeting system, DirecTV will push local ads in advance of their airdates, where they will be stored at the premises level (i.e., in the set-top box). From there, th e Invidi software will cue up the spots from the set-top hard drive. In other words, rather than viewing a scheduled national s pot in the two-minute local window, DirecTV subs will see relevant ads targeted specifically to certain consumer behaviors/demographic contours, depending on what that particular advertiser is looking to achieve with its campaign.

DirecTV will begin serving up the Invidi software to “friendlies” in early 2010, with an eye toward full deployment to its 18.1 million subscribers by 2011. “It won’t be a matter of just flipping a switch, but once they start lighting the boxes up, the progression will be rapid,” said Michael Kubin, executive vp, Invidi.

In the early stages of the service, DirecTV will offer a quarter of its available inventory for targeted ads. Schedules and deliveries will be verified by Invidi’s ADN (ad delivery notification) software.

“Advertisers hate waste, and what we offer marks a significant change in the ability to get the right spots in front of the right people,” Kubin said. “Our spot optimization allows advertisers to carve up the audience into segments, so they can hit different demos in the same break. A targeted audience is exponentially more valuable than the sort of deliveries you can achieve with a shotgun approach.”

Founded in 2000, Invidi is backed by a number of investors, including GroupM, Motorola and Menlo Ventures.

“Individual household advertising solutions have for decades been the holy grail of marketers and media professionals,” said GroupM global CEO Irwin Gotlieb. “We hope this is an early step in the establishment of a common ecosystem for the television industry’s delivery of advanced advertising products.”

The deal comes as the cable industry readies its own advanced-advertising cooperative, Canoe Ventures. While AMC kicks the tires on Canoe, parent company––and Canoe investor––Cablevision is expanding its own targeting capabilities this summer. After an 18-month trial reaching 100,000 subscriber households, Cablevision is opening the aperture, prepping a targeted-ad push that will include 500,000 households across the New York metro area.

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DirecTV Taps Invidi For Local Ads

Will push localized ads to DVR storage

Satellite operator DirecTV has signed a deal with addressable advertising firm Invidi Technologies to supply it with software that will allow it to deliver local advertising by playing pre-recorded ads off subscribers’ digital video recorder (DVR) set-tops.

Invidi is the first technology supplier that DirecTV has formally announced for the local advertising initiative, which won’t launch until January 2011. Geographically-targeted ads would be “pushed” in advance to be stored on subscribers’ set-tops, and the Invidi software would cue up the localized ads to be played off the hard drive in place of a national spot.

“It is an extensive undertaking, and we’re in the very early stages,” says Bob Riordan, SVP of advertising sales for DirecTV.

Invidi, whose investors include advertising firm Group M and Motorola, struck a similar deal with Dish Network back in November for its Advatar software. Interactive TV firm NDS, which supplies conditional-access and guide technology to DirecTV, has also proposed using DVR storage to deliver targeted advertising. And in 2007, News Corp. applied for a U.S. patent for a process by which an MPEG-2 compressed program would be broken up into a series of segmented files that separates program content from commercials and promos. Fresh commercials could then be delivered to the DVR on a “push” basis, through either broadcast or broadband delivery, and new software would be smart enough to record them and then “splice” them into the program when a viewe r watches a time-shifted show.

DirecTV has begun offering some local avails on regional sports networks, in partnership with cable entities NCC and Comcast Spotlight, but that is through traditional linear satellite feeds. The new system, which could eventually also use broadband connections to deliver local advertising, would be a major improvement that could be available across DirecTV’s broader base of channels.

“It gives us the ability to get into the local marketplace,” says Riordan. “We’ve been a national platform, and we’ve done very well, but that’s kind of restricted our growth somewhat. Now we can get out in the marketplace at a local level.”

Invidi, which was founded in 2000, has working deployments of addressable advertising with multichannel operators today, says EVP Michael Kubin, but it hasn’t been able to disclose who they are.

When it was pointed out that NDS also has such a targeted-ad system, and that News Corp. has also applied for a U.S. patent relating to delivering targeted ads from a DVR, Kubin agreed that intellectual property was a big issue. But he says Invidi is only using technology it d eveloped, and hasn’t licensed any outside [IP]. He says he is also sure that Dish and DirecTV have done their homework on the patent front.

“There’s a broad portfolio of IP that covers this, and the reason these deployments take so long is everyone is really careful to make sure the IP is in place,” he says.

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DirecTV Delivers Addressable Ads

Satellite television distributor DirecTV Group has struck a deal with Invidi Technologies to deliver addressable advertising starting in 2011.

DirecTV has been selling national advertising for some time. The company says this is an effort that initially will sell advertising locally.

Like many addressable advertising providers, Invidi looks to store advertising that is appropriate to specific households or geographic locations on TV viewers' set-top boxes, then send out those commercial messages when needed.

Invidi struck a similar deal with Dish Network back in November. Invidi investors include media agency Group M and electronics manufacturer Motorola.

Many addressable initiatives are under way -- including one that Invidi has been testing with Comcast's Baltimore cable system.

One big effort that is beyond the testing phase is with Cablevision Systems and addressable advertising technology company Visible World, which has Group M's parent company, WPP Group, as an investor. After a year of testing, the system is now deployed in some half-million Cablevision households. The target is to be in 1 million homes by the end of the year.

Overall, Cablevision has some 2.8 million digital TV subscribers that it intends to connect with addressable ad technology. Tara Walpert Levy, president of Visible World, says a number of advertisers have bought in so far, including entertainment and consumer electronics marketers.

Cramster.com featured on front page of "Personal Journal" article in Wall Street Journal

Do Study Sites Make the Grade?

At 10 p.m. on a recent night, high-school senior Scott Landers was having trouble figuring out differential calculus in order to compare rates of change.

With his professor unreachable and the exam set for the next day, he sent a shot in the dark to Cramster, an "online study community" recommended by classmates.

Within two hours, Mr. Landers was surprised to find his answer pop up in his email, followed by a few more responses the next morning, all pointing in the same direction. "I thought it was cool that there were people out there actually willing to help me," he says.

[Online]

Cramster, an online study community, helped high-school senior Scott Landers with differential calculus.

Web sites such as Cramster aim to revolutionize the way students study, much the way that networking sites like Facebook have changed the way people socialize.

Course Hero, launched last year primarily for college students, already holds a library of more than two million course documents, including homework, class notes and graded essays, uploaded by students enrolled at 3,000 different colleges. Koofers (a nickname at Virginia Tech for old tests passed around at fraternities) allows students from about 25 state universities to submit posts about the difficulty of courses taught by different instructors at their schools. It also offers average semester grades from instructors. Enotes, geared mainly to high-school students, allows peers to form discussion groups and pose questions to experts -- usually teachers -- who are paid by the Web site.

Not surprisingly, at a time when schools are cutting back on classes and faculty, and students are cutting down on expensive tutors, visits to the sites are skyrocketing. Cramster, which has more than 500,000 registered users, says its monthly subscriptions, at $10, are about double what they were a year ago, according to co-founder Aaron Hawkey. Registered users on Course Hero have doubled each month so far this year, says President David Kim, though he declines to reveal the number.

Many teachers, however, aren't enthusiastic about the sites, claiming they promote dishonesty among students. In addition to answering homework questions, some sites offer test answers and professors' old tests. Cramster offers a bank of answers to various problems, along with the steps taken to get to the solution, for 225 different textbooks.

While it's one thing for students to share class notes, it's another for students to easily access old exams created by a professor, says Teddi Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University. "It's not unreasonable for a professor to recycle an old test," she says, which would give study-site users an unfair advantage. The old exam also belongs to the professor, she says, while the Web site ultimately profits from using it. "That's unethical," she says.

"Some teachers think we're the worst thing to ever happen," says Koofers Chief Strategy Officer Michael Rihani. To address such concerns, many sites make an effort to discuss cheating up front. Mr. Rihani says he approaches honor committees for each university before posting course materials and past tests on the site, "to make sure we're not promoting something that's going to get students in trouble."

Enotes allows students to ask one free question per day, to prevent cheating. Cramster states flatly on its site that it will ban users who cheat, and offers a place for teachers to contact them if they discover cheating. For high-school students, Cramster offers only odd-numbered textbook solutions, which thwarts students from getting perfect scores on homework assignments.

Michael Grams, a physics professor at South Dakota State University, emailed Cramster to address conflicts with a student copying homework from the site. He reports that a site official stepped in to confirm the student's use of the site -- and ultimately banned her. "I'll give them credit for doing that," Mr. Grams says, though he still considers the site a "huge problem."

The study sites argue that they are mimicking the contents of countless study halls and cram sessions across the country: Notes, syllabi, homework and other documents get passed around. "The common sharing of notes, discussion that's articulated in a way they understand, are things that can be done online today," says Course Hero's Mr. Kim.

With the Internet, the sites say, it's inevitable that all this information will be available to students anyway. It's up to the schools, they say, to come to terms with modern times. "We're just putting things out in the open," says Koofers' Mr. Rihani, who says his site is making old tests previously accessible only to fraternity members, available to more students.

Mr. Rihani notes that putting old tests online can help force more professors to refresh their old exams periodically.

The study sites are likely to propel schools to rethink the way they teach. "What these sites are doing, is simply accumulating information that students would like to know, and putting it out there," says Virginia Tech marketing professor Jim Littlefield.

In fact, Professor Grams, the physics professor from South Dakota State University, said his students' use of Cramster has forced him to lessen the weight of graded homework to 10% of the final grade from 30% in the past. "I didn't like doing that," he says, "but I was pretty much forced" because of the study sites. Previously, he weighed homework equal to exams, in order to give students that worked hard a leg up.

Most sites charge a subscription fee while leaving some portion of their offerings free to the public. Course Hero charges $20 a month for students to access its offerings, although they can forgo the monthly charge by uploading at least 30 documents useful to peers, such as class notes or a graded test. Most of Cramster's offerings are free, but the site charges about $10 a month, or $50 a year, for "premium" membership, entitling students to more access and quicker response time on message boards.

In some cases, even professors have used the sites. David Choi, who teaches entrepreneurship classes at Loyola Marymount University's College of Business in Los Angeles, last year taught a course on product development to students enrolled at two different colleges. He uploaded class materials to Course Hero so that students from both schools could easily access the same files. "Information technology dramatically affects how we do business now," including teaching, he says.

In academia today, the sharing of information is generally much more ubiquitous, as more professors shift to "open courseware" publishing or "wiki" models where multiple writers can contribute. Yale and MIT now post entire course materials online.

The traditional model of university teaching is "that we are the givers of information," says Ms. Fishman. "We need to move to a model where the different sorts of information available are addressed and students need to learn to be critical consumers of information."

Matt Hastings, a senior at Virginia Tech majoring in finance, says he logs on to Koofers before choosing classes so he can research average grades by different professors teaching the same class. Last spring, Mr. Hastings signed up for a course on investments that fit well with his schedule. But after attending the first class, Mr. Hastings says he felt that the professor's teaching style "wouldn't keep my attention."

After class, he logged onto Koofers and looked at student reviews of other professors who taught the same course. Ultimately, he reworked his schedule to choose the class taught by a different professor. Mr. Hastings earned an A in the class.

The Wall Street Journal's "Heard On The Runway" blog discusses value with BrandIndex

Lunchtime Snap: The Changing Nature of Value

AFP/Getty Images

In recent months, shoppers have voted with their wallets, spending more money at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. while cherry-picking the sales at other stores.

New data from BrandIndex, which polls 5,000 consumers each day, asking “Do you receive good value for what you pay,” confirms the trend. Discounters Target and Wal-Mart have seen their scores rise over the past six months, while Abercrombie & Fitch, which bucked the discounting trend, and luxury retailers Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue saw their saw their scores stay in the negative range.

BrandIndex compiles the scores by subtracting negative feedback from positive feedback. The further away from 100, the more negative the value rank is. Abercrombie has a -22.36 score, as compared to Neiman Marcus (-18.27), Saks Fifth Avenue (-14.64), Target (53.08) and Wal-Mart (41.08).

A negative ranking doesn’t mean people dislike a retailer, notes Ted Marzilli, senior vice president at BrandIndex. “But in a time like this,” he says, certain retailers, including luxury retailers, “get written off. They’re not on people’s radar screens anymore because they are not in the consideration set.”

Readers, has your perception of the value provided by stores changed in the last few months?

YouGovPolimetrix retail research appears in Wall Street Journal's Macy's story

[EXCERPT]

Retail Downturn Rains on Macy's Parade

Department-Store Chain's CEO Says Size Lets it Strike New Deals, Cut Costs to Weather Sales Decline

When Macy's Inc. paid $11.5 billion to acquire rival May Co. in 2005, investors asked whether consolidation could save the department store, or just prolong its decline.

So far it looks more like the latter. The company lost $30 million in the first nine month this year on a 4.3% decline in sales. A brutal drop in consumer spending is expected to make the holiday season -- which begins with Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday -- the bleakest in nearly two decades, and already has sent smaller competitors into bankruptcy...

Such deals have helped distinguish Macy's from its competitors and improve its image. YouGovPolimetrix, which polls Americans on brand perception, found that over the past 18 months, Macy's reputation has improved more than any department store.

YouGovPolimetrix data appears in The Wall Street Journal's front page Wal-Mart story

"Wal-Mart Flourishes As Economy Turns Sour"
[EXCERPT]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation's largest private employer, is reaping big gains from the souring economy even as consumers cut back, retail chains struggle and thousands lose their jobs.

On Thursday, after a week of bad news from retailers such as Best Buy Co. and Starbucks Corp., Wal-Mart said earnings for the third quarter rose 9.8% while sales rose 7.5%. At stores open at least a year, sales rose 3%, twice as much as a year before, and far better than nearly every other U.S. retailer...

Wal-Mart's image problems also persist. In ads and press releases, union-funded groups continue to portray Wal-Mart as a retail vampire draining the lifeblood of Main Streets across America.

YouGovPolimetrix, a firm that polls Americans on brand perception, says people think more positively about Wal-Mart this year than they have in the past, but less positively than they do about Target. And among college-educated consumers, Wal-Mart's reputation has not improved.

NBCU Takes 35% Stake in driverTV - Wall Street Journal, paidcontent.org, Lost Remote, Mediapost, Mediaweek, ClickZ

"Push In Online Car Shopping" -- The Wall Street Journal

"NBCU Picks Up 35 Percent Stake in DriverTV; Seeks Ad Dollars in Online Car Shopping" -- paidcontent.org

"NBCU buys one third of driverTV" -- Lost Remote

"NBCU invests in driverTV" -- Mediaweek

"NBC Sets Sights on Niche Video Audiences" -- ClickZ

"High Gear" NBCU Invests in driverTV" -- Mediapost

Motorola Ventures invests in INVIDI Technologies -- The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Adweek/Mediaweek, Multichannel News, PaidContent, etc.

AD NOTES: Invidi, a closely held company that is a pioneering maker of software for cable set-top boxes, is receiving an investment from Motorola Inc. The backing from Motorola marks a win for Invidi, an eight-year-old company based in Princeton, N.J. Motorola is the largest maker of set-top boxes in the U.S. and is the biggest supplier of the devices to companies like Comcast Corp., the largest cable provider in the U.S. The handset giant made the investment through Motorola Ventures, its venture-capital arm. The amount of the investment wasn't disclosed, but Motorola says its initial investments in start-ups usually range between $3 million and $5 million. Set-top boxes have grown increasingly sophisticated in recent years and are expected to play a key role in allowing marketers to better target their ads.

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"Motorola Invests In INVIDI Technologies" -- Associated Press

"Motorola Invest in Targeted-Ad Company" -- Multichannel News

"Motorola Invests in Ad Tech Firm Invidi" -- Adweek/Mediaweek

"Motorola Invests In INVIDI Technologies" -- Dow Jones Newswire

"TV Ad Targeter Invidi Gets Investment From Motorola" -- paidcontent.org

"Motorola Invests In Addressable TV Ad Targeting Firm" -- Mediapost

Guitar World's new "tabs" web site featured prominently in The Wall Street Journal

"Crib Sheets For Guitar Heroes"
Musical 'Tab' Sharing
Migrates to Web Sites
That Pay for Rights

By ETHAN SMITH -- THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 21, 2007

[EXCERPT]
Brad Tolinski, Guitar World editor in chief, sees the tab sites as more than just a future source of revenue for the music industry. Tablature has been used for decades by musicians with no formal training and rose to prominence during the folk revival of the 1950s and '60s.

The system "tells players where to put their fingers on the instrument, rather than pitches to play," making it simpler and more mechanical than sheet music, Mr. Tolinski notes. Almost no banjo music is available in notation other than tablature, he adds.

On Guitar World's Web site, which is currently operating in "beta" mode, users can search professional and amateur tabs by recording artist and by song title, as well as browse "most viewed" and "highest rated" tabs.

Among the pro transcriptions on the Guitar World site are the guitar gymnastics from Judas Priest's metal classic "Hell Bent for Leather" and the Allman Brothers Band's Southern rock anthem "Melissa." User-submitted tabs include David Bowie's "Life on Mars," classics from Creedence Clearwater Revival, Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash and a number of R&B songs that the Beatles covered early in their career.

Breaking GroupM/WPP's investment into client INVIDI appears in Wall St. Journal, NY Times, Reuters, Ad Age, Adweek, PaidContent, NewTeeVee, and more

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2007

WALL STREET JOURNAL

Group M invests in TV ad targeting firm.

WPP Group's Group M plans to announce today that it is leading a $25 million investment in Invidi Technologies, which provides television-ad-targeting technology to cable, satellite and telecom companies. Invidi's technology helps those companies identify viewers so that advertisers can reach them with specific commercials according to their profiles. The other investors include Menlo Ventures, InterWest Partners and EnerTech Capital. Group M declined to say how much of the $25 million it was investing. Group M is the parent company of four media-planing firms, including MindShare and Mediaedge:CIA, that collectively account for about $58.8 billion in annual ad spending globally.