Packet Vision Targeted Advertising Trial

Packet Vision ran a targeted, addressable advertising trial on the Inuk PC-based Internet IPTV service. Inuk provides TV services to about 150 thousand college and university students in the UK using a PC-based client.

The campaign featuring a Mediacom financial client ran daily on Channel 4 in the UK between 16 and 31 October. It was specifically targeted at university students across the UK so that during the same 40 seconds in which the ad spot ran, students saw an ad from a different brand to the rest of the general viewing population.

Packet Vision worked closely with Channel 4 to support the ad insertion trial. Local ad insertion is not generally available in the UK or the rest of Europe, so the programming that Channel 4 provided to Inuk had to be modified to provide the time slots for the ad insertions.

There were 44 ad insertions made during this two week period. The ads were targeted to students located in the UK but not in Scotland or Northern Ireland. Raw viewing data was provided by Inuk to Packet Vision. Packet Vision created reports for Mediacom that gave exact counts of viewers along with some demographic profiling. This is a more precise measure than the estimates ususally provided by viewer surveys.

Inuk and Packet Vision are working on a more extensive trial that will probably be five weeks long and provide more precise geographic and affinity group targeting. Packet Vision is also working with IPTV service providers in France and in Spain to set up similar trials. It is also working with Channel 4 in the UK to smooth out the sales and operational processes to support these targeted services.

Packet Vision stated that these targeting techiniques will be implement in North America, because there is already a well established infrastructure for ad insertion. The broadcasters already provide video streams that are prepared for ad insertion.

The techniques that Pacet Vision is pioneering in Europe are extremely important to IPTV. The revenue streams from advertising will be a significant addition to the IPTV business case. There is a lot of work to be done in Europe, but the potential returns are well worth it.