Cablevision's Frey Outlines VOD Advertising Success
Cable operator's advanced advertising chief delivers keynote at B&C/Multichannel News OnDemand Summit
By B&C Staff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/11/2009 11:58:27 AM
Delivering the keynote address at the B&C/Multichannel News OnDemand Summit June 10 in Philadelphia, Cablevision Advanced Platform's Senior Vice President Barry Frey outlined the company's success in pioneering advertising via Video On Demand with companies such as Disney Parks and U.S. Navy. Frey also underscored the MSO's plan to allow for same-day insertion of advertising and warned the cable industry to learn the separate lessons of the music business and newspaper businesses in neither overprotecting content nor giving it all away for free.
The transcript of the speech follows...
Good Afternoon. Hopefully you've enjoyed your lunch and our short video presentation. The video showed some of the original vision for VOD and advanced advertising and today we'll talk about some of the actual fruition of where we are today as kicked off by my friend Tinkerbelle.
We're certainly now in an on demand world as predicted, but nonetheless we're here. So let's talk today regarding how operators, programmers and advertisers can work best together to grow our businesses.
You know, I started writing these remarks in a very demanding environment. I started after sending e-mails, tweeting, IM ing my kids on Facebook (yes they allow me to be their friends) and then watching a broadcast of "Meet the Press"! And I was doing this all on demand at 38,000 feet flying from NY to LA! Amazing!
Quick poll: How many of you folks have used wireless web connections on demand on planes? Who likes the idea of wireless on planes? Let me see. Who actually thinks it disturbs the last bastion of peace that we can all enjoy?
So, EVEN up in the sky change is upon us. Today more than ever, technology continues to innovate and create new media choices and products for the consumer. If these products are good consumers will use them. And when consumers start using them advertisers need to follow.
This changing environment brings about some real challenges and some real opportunities to work with the ad community in this on demand world!
So let's discuss today how the Cable Industry has leadership in our grasp. But, first, let's take a quick view at some other industries that mishandled change.
As we know, the music industry sat on the sidelines of change didn't react boldly or quickly and therefore saw a huge disruption if not destruction of their business.
On the other hand, the publishing business, rushed in probably too quickly blindly or perhaps nearsightedly giving away their content. Now they're trying to get that publishing cat back in some sort of subscription bag but it won't be easy.
The winning position is to acknowledge change embrace it and have the vision to step in at the right moment with the right strategy.
Now Cable has begun to create new products and revenue streams tied to customer value. Yet we need to do more.
And as an industry we have started the process of embracing paradigm shifts. Yet we need to do more.
And programmers and operators have started using new technologies to deliver advertiser value. Yet we need to do more.
In this regard, at Cablevision, we believe we've started the process of doing more!
We're focusing sharply on the ad community and have worked hard to develop advanced advertising products and partner relationships that may provide some examples and learning.
We have been guided by some core principles that may apply to many in the room:
- We're exploring new revenue streams that help differentiate us from other media.
- We're studying how the web has made money, then replicate and improve upon it
- And then we try to tap into customer use of VOD and ITV and empower our thirty second units.
All while listening to viewers and advertisers and deploying new technologies in order to build desirable products.
Premier product
Branded Advertiser channel
- Totally branded environments
- Direct Tune, Channel #, position in guide
- Video galleries for on demand video,
- Photos, text, displays, polling
- Dialogue with consumers
- ***Pre populated lead generation system
- Scores of advertisers
- Unilever, Mars, Sony, Auto Companies, US Navy
- Visits, impressions, uniques, ff, rw, pause, lengths of visits
- Census based-Nielsen 800 boxes, pulse of 18 million NY'ers
- In TiVo/DVR world, 7-12 minutes engagements
- Click to Call, press remote, 5 minutes, 23% Expensive trips
- Navy, officers staff store fronts
So we expose viewers to products, brand attributes then they engage and take action.
Here's the beauty in this. We have opened, developed, and closed the sales continuum for marketers! You see, historically television first created awareness for a brand, product or service, and then print media gave the product details, beauty shots, in depth descriptions, etc. Radio followed in driving messages home to targeted audiences then people would walk into a store and take action. Now, we are doing all of this via television. We have taken the most powerful medium and made it even more powerful!
And to continue on TV power we drive consumers to these branded ad channels via an array of promotional and navigation elements in which our Power 30s lead the charge! Unlike your father's 30 second commercial or those of broadcast, our 30's (we've trademarked them Power 30s) lead to long term engagement are interactive and deliver great advertiser content on demand!
On Demand advertising is NOW coming into its own! This was predicted years ago in an AD AGE cover story. In fact, the TV editor led her story "If you don't know VOD....you're DOA!" This prescient and prolific pundit will now proffer poignant panel thoughts as Claire Atkinson, now with Broadcasting & Cable moderates the panel after this. Hi Claire!
Another focus, at Cablevision and across our industry, has been the enabling of more relevant and measurable commercials or commonly referred to as addressable advertising.
We've proudly deployed the largest addressable execution in the country currently at 500K homes and by soon to be in over a million!
We saw the POWER of this when we tested our own triple play products in this addressable environment, we experienced double-digit lifts in sales.
This works by blind matching, geographic and demographic household characteristics on an anonymous aggregated basis (whew!) with advertisers' specific marketing segmentations.
Individual households can now see different more relevant commercials. Of the many advertisers we're working with our smart phone client has commercials appearing in households with business people received business application for the phone and in houses with youth texting capabilities were showcased.
In fact, many advertisers from Universal McCann, Starcom and Group M have welcomed this more advanced measurement and increased tune time for these relevant commercials.
And what's great is that viewers stay longer with the more relevant commercials! Makes sense!
Now for years we've all thought pre-roll advertising for VOD would be the great leap forward with targeted content and virtually must see commercials.
Unfortunately, we've had a series of stale commercial spots, baked into VOD content for months at a time. The commercials lack timely relevance and this has become an arduous and disappointing process.
For VOD advertising to succeed, this needs to change. And change it will! Now earlier today, we announced that Cablevision has sliced this time gap! We will be offering advertisers the ability to insert pre roll VOD commercials and re-fresh within 24 hours. We call this "same-day insertion" And we're also delivering all of the vital click-stream data.
- There'll be more products and more to come from us and you in this room!
- plus more empowering of the thirty second unit
- Soon, at Cablevision we'll be saving content, requesting leads and even soon.
- Offering consumers to buy a product
- all on demand
- all from the thirty! Or I should say the "Power 30"
As an industry we
- should be studying the data,
- listening to viewers and
- optimizing the experiences from these learning's.
For example, at Cablevision; we continually hold focus groups that bring to bear many insights including how sophisticated today's consumers are! For instance, when they see our advertiser channels, they know they're being sold to! Yet their reaction is "Give me something that is relevant, informative and entertaining... and I will stay, participate and take action."
Now, many of our operator and programmer friends are taking the right steps in this arena. Innovation and vision are both taking place throughout your organizations and it must continue.
Canoe Ventures for example is pushing the agenda to organize
- Advanced advertising and data opportunities on a large scale basis
And speaking of advanced advertising, I'd like to paraphrase a recent artfully written review in one of the media trades "Marketers are sweet on advanced advertising because it spikes the punch of TV commercials with the bracing liquor of quantifiable data and true brand engagement". Nice ay?
So here are a few things to keep in mind:
1. We can all make our thirties even more powerful as they become interactive, addressable and offer gateways to dialogue, engagement and action.
2. Let's push the agenda in our organizations to invest in new technologies, innovate, test, deploy and address all of our customer needs. Acting when prudent!
We must continue to innovate as innovative companies can lose their way. A little known fact about the recording industry (told to me by radio legend Norman Wain) is that it was very innovative. After the recession RCA Victor built their recording business by offering an alternative music source to radio broadcasting. All of their ads and record labels were stamped with the following slogan: The music you want-when you want it---sound familiar?
3. And our third point Deliver especially in tough economic times real ROI and true accountability to our advertising partners.
And most importantly, realize we're working in television! There is nothing like the sight, sound, motion and emotion of TV to create brands desire for brands and reasons to act on brands.
Now, much focus has been on the web and Google as ad vehicles, but here's the reality as consumers:
- The internet can help you with a product that you know about and need
- But television can uniquely and powerfully bring you a new reason to try a new brand, product or service
This is what truly drives the economy and is what the country needs today!
Let's feel great about TV! As recent studies from Nielsen and Ball State University have indicated TV is still by far the dominant medium, accounting for 99% of all video viewership. Even among 18-24 year olds, it was 98 percent! Furthermore, TV viewing is still rising up 7% from 08 over 07!
So in summary, it's critical for cable TV to continually show real leadership in this digital age and understand all of our customer's needs. For if we are listening as good listeners and as good leaders our road map is clear.
Winston Churchill said during the war "Great leadership is not necessarily pushing people in a direction but it is keenly understanding where they need to go and helping them to get there." We in cable can listen, can keenly understand, can innovate and we can lead!
Now back to the screen or "Back to the Future" of advertising which is here today! Thank you!
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