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GroupM Signs with TidalTV for Addressable TV Ads

WPP’s GroupM has signed with TidalTV for addressable television advertising, and will begin running targeted ads to specific viewer groups as early as next year.

TidalTV offers addressable advertising to marketers via Dish Network satellite TV. It gathers household information during programming, then feeds relevant ads using its ad-serving platforms, which are deployed by the cable or satellite operators.

WPP already has investments in Invidi and Visible World, two technology companies in the race to offer addressable TV advertising down to the household level, according to Forbes.

Dish Network signed a deal with Invidi last November to deliver addressable television advertising. In July, Google TV Ads signed with Visible World, whose software allows advertisers to change ads depending on demographics. Meanwhile, DirecTV announced in June it will roll out addressable ads in 2011; Cablevision already offers customizable ad delivery in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Before they fully embrace addressable advertising, however, marketers want it to be available in wider scope; if they are to create different ads targeted to different groups, they need to reach a substantial number of people in those groups, ideally on the scale that television already gives them. Cable groups including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Cablevision, Charter Communications and Brighthouse Networks have formed a group called Canoe, which is pushing for a national infrastructure standard that would make interactive and targeted ads easier to distribute, according to the article.

Canoe originally planned to offer an addressable advertising platform in this year, but because of some operational flaws that made the platform impractical to use, Canoe pulled the plug on the addressability aspect of its offerings for now, and will instead focus on interactive ads which allow viewers to click on ads via their remote controls to get more information. Canoe is still committed to creating its own technology that will allow advertisers to buy ads on the community level at some point in the future, sources say,

TidalTV CEO is Scott Ferber, who sold Advertising.com to AOL for $435 million in 2004. GroupM is TidalTV’s first client, MediaPost reports.