Comcast Spotlight Takes TV Beyond the 30-Second Spot

Cable World,  March 7, 2005  

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...But Madison Avenue wants tech help, not (always) spot cable.

By Shirley Brady

Cable made history in last year's annual national advertising upfront marketplace, with ad-supported cable networks closing upfront deals before broadcast networks for the first time. Comcast is looking to force that kind of tectonic shift in the spot television advertising marketplace.

In some corners, agencies proved to be willing to listen, shaking off their old notions of spot cable as a paper-ridden pain in the neck. Evidence of this can be found in Comcast Spotlight's year-end financial results that show a 17% jump in 2004 revenue.

Beyond buying spots, some advertisers tapped into the division's cutting- edge targeting tools--showing Madison Avenue how Comcast can help it embrace, understand and profit from technology. With the 30-second commercial under assault by ad-zapping technologies, agencies welcome that help in breaking beyond the linear commercial pod, but they don't necessarily want to be tied to spot cable in order to do so.

Comcast's success with its on-demand platform has resonated on Madison Avenue, where even the biggest skeptics of spot cable are taking a second look, thanks to the nascent VOD ad market. Fallon Worldwide president Rob White, a spot cable cynic, says he is "totally keen" on on-demand advertising, which Spotlight has been pioneering through the long-form showcases it launched last year with General Motors and others.

"What is prime time?" the expat Scot rhetorically asks. "There is no prime time, it's all going to on demand, on some level. All the metric companies are scrambling right now--the Nielsens of this world--because we're in this brave new world and there's no metrics for anything right now."

With aggressive growth targets to hit, Spotlight is baking VOD ads (for which it generated $19 million in revenue last year) into integrated campaigns. The ads will run along the lines of last year's Old Spice Red Zone launch with Procter & Gamble. That multi-market, multi-platform initiative in select Comcast markets combined on-air spots, online ads, on-demand ads and on-site local market events to convince males 18 to 34 to reach for P&G's new body wash. The result: 80,000 sweepstakes entries, 8 million visits to OldSpice.com and a breakthrough campaign that has been nominated for a 2005 Reggie Award by the Promotional Marketing Association.

"We've got a great ability to reach consumers on behalf of marketers across multiple platforms and in effect reach them in different activities," says Warren Schlichting, VP, new business strategy, for Spotlight. "Watching linear television is much different than watching time-shifted television, which is different than the 'lean forward' Internet experience. We feel like we've got a nice triangle: linear, VOD--meaning ITV/on demand--and the Internet."

Spotlight's Ad Bundles

All of Spotlight's VOD ad buys are linked to linear spot buys--for now. However, Comcast Spotlight president Charlie Thurston's team is in "the early stages" of exploring alternatives that would make it more attractive for network advertisers to build on-demand showcases.

More flexibility is good news to Madison Avenue influentials like Bob Flood, EVP and director of national electronic media at Optimedia, who says he is eager to bring more of his clients into the VOD ad space but doesn't want to be tied to spot cable buys.

"The cable MSOs don't really have their act together, and what they're trying to do is pressure advertisers to buy a spot package and then they'll give you access to VOD [and] new technology tools," he says. "I would prefer just to get in that space and deal with the tools, and if there's a reason why I should buy a spot-based plan...then do that.

"I'm considering going to the cable networks directly and saying, 'insert my commercial when you do your deal with the cable MSO,' so it's embedded as part of the deal," he continues.

As a participant in Cox's Free-Zone VOD launch, Mitch Oscar, EVP of Carat Digital, doesn't mind a spot cable entree to VOD advertising. The question for him is whether a 30-second spot is worth as much as two or three minutes--or perhaps more--of video on demand. "All operators are tying VOD advertising to spot cable," he says. "They're deploying all this technology...to generate more income. They're only at about $5.4 billion of the $60 billion [annual] in television spending. They feel that offering VOD makes their business more attractive."

Oscar's clients are looking into whether buying cable spots will help drive tune-in for their VOD messages. "We know that cable operators are their own worst enemies in terms of marketing," Oscar says. "If we could run a VOD spot and not have to buy any spot cable--let's say they said, 'All right, you want a fixed fee. Pay us $10,000 and we'll put you up there'--well nobody will know it's there."