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Comcast Makes Its Move

Cable World, Sept 8, 2003

Byline: K. C. NEEL

No segment of Comcast's ad sales division is growing faster than its multicultural initiatives, and no advertisers are more responsible for that growth than those wanting to attract Hispanic viewers.

Of course, Comcast isn't exactly a bystander. Its launch of the CableLatino programming package, coupled with the licensing of Adlink's Adtag and Adcopy targeting technologies and the implementation of Nielsen's Hispanic-American Television Index (NHTI) service, have all goosed the MSO's ad sales revenue, according to Sandra Weber, director of national sales for multicultural markets, Comcast Ad Sales.

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Weber launched AT&T Broadband's Hispanic ad sales program two years ago, and the initiative has been expanded under Comcast to include other ethnic groups. Still, Hispanics are a big target for advertisers and Comcast can deliver them. Combined with AT&T Broadband's footprint, Comcast now serves five of the top eight Hispanic markets. It also serves eight of the top ten African-American markets and seven of the top ten Asian markets. In all, the MSO's service territory covers 52% of all ethnic cable households in the U.S.

Hispanics are a red-hot demographic for advertisers. For one thing, the Hispanic population exploded 61% between 1990 and 2003 - going from 21.9 million to 35.3 million. That makes it the fastest-growing group in America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Hispanic population is also expected to triple in size by 2050, reaching 24% of the total U.S. population, according to Strategy Research Corp. And their buying power continues to grow substantially. The Santiago Solutions Group reports that Hispanic purchasing power is expected to hit the $675 billion mark this year, $928 billion by 2007 and $1.2 trillion by 2010.

So it's little wonder that Comcast is allocating a significant amount of its resources to lure advertisers that want access to Latinos. Adlink's Adtag and Adcopy technologies provide advertisers with customized targeting and segmentation capabilities; markets can be broken down geographically, demographically or psychographically so advertisers can target the right messages to the right audience. That's important because a message that may resonate with one demographic group may fall flat with another, Weber says. The products are already in use in Los Angeles and New York, and Weber says advertisers in the automotive, beverage, retail, entertainment, political and food categories have found them to be valuable.

"The products will allow us to break down our markets ethnically so advertisers can send out different messages to different ethnic groups," she says.

Adtag allows advertisers to run the same commercial throughout the same DMA, and tag it with individual dealer, franchise or store names that are specific to geographic locations within a market. The viewer sees the location of the nearest retailer.

Adcopy enables advertisers to run different commercials simultaneously in specified subsections of the market. This allows specific targeting of audiences based on demographic or psychographic characteristics of people residing within those areas. Advertisers can tailor the mix of commercials to deliver a more targeted message without sacrificing the reach to build their brands across the entire market, Weber says. Comcast will launch the products in Chicago and Detroit this fall, with a national rollout planned for early next year.

The operator's CableLatino package was also designed to lure advertisers. CableLatino is delivered in analog, which means Comcast can inserts ads on those networks. The package is available in Miami, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Fresno, Calif., Albuquerque, N.M., and now Baltimore. The package will be available to consumers in Philadelphia this month, according Mauro Panzera, who heads up Comcast's multicultural marketing team.

The programming package includes ten Spanish-language video channels, 40 music channels and a lifeline English-language slate of programming for around $20 a month. Research showed that Comcast lost Hispanic customers when they had to buy a bunch of other programming - expanded basic and digital basic - to get the Spanish-language networks they wanted to watch, Panzera says. CableLatino is an analog service, but customers who subscribe to it receive a digital box so they can take advantage of some of what digital has to offer, including video-on-demand. They can also subscribe to more expensive and expansive Spanish-language digital packages, he notes.

Clearly, the more Spanish-language programming that becomes available on cable, the more attractive cable will be to Hispanic consumers, says Rosa Serrano, SVP, group account director/multicultural for Initiative Media, an Interpublic company. "Cable companies are making it easier to target Hispanic consumers," Serrano says. "But they need to do more. Comcast is certainly leading the way when it comes to serving their multicultural viewers."

Technology Industry

Comcast Makes Its Move

Cable World, Sept 8, 2003

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