This week, Rogers Video will become the first marketer to try out the innovative Flex-Advertising introduced earlier this month by Corus Custom Networks (a division of Corus Entertainment). The cable biggie will use the service to change and update new release titles and dates on Corus’s TV Listings Channel.
The new service ‘makes television advertising as dynamic as Internet advertising,’ says Tyler Alton, VP/GM of Corus Custom Networks. ‘We are providing our clients with the opportunity to change their ads as often as they like, allowing them to keep their marketing messages current and their customers informed.’
Adds Angela Joyce, the company’s marketing manager: ‘Clients simply log onto our extranet, make the necessary changes to their ads and confirm their requests. Then their ad is sent to broadcast on the TV Listings Channel.’ Typically, she explains, information that needs updating includes prices, dates or availability.
Corus Custom Networks’ full-service broadcast design team will create customized ad templates for Flex-Advertising clients and post them on the extranet – after which clients can manage evolving changes. The TV Listings Channel plays uninterrupted 24-hour channel guide information in a split-screen format that allows advertisers to run commercials of 15, 30, 60 or 90 seconds on the top half of the screen while the channel guide appears at the bottom. The channel reaches over 1.8 million viewers each week in over 80 markets across BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.
As for marketing the new service, Joyce tells MiC her company ‘has identified national advertisers who change their print and on-screen creative regularly, and we are presenting customized pitches directly to them. In addition, we are making the agency and media-buying community aware through presentations that demonstrate the technology’ and the ways Flex-Advertising can be advantageous in the marketing mix. ‘We are also communicating its benefits to our (current advertising clients) on the TV Listings Channel, Broadcast News Channel and Digital Signage.’
One of the chief advantages with Flex-Advertising, says Joyce, is being able to measure the impact of any given ad in real time and quickly tweak it when necessary. ‘We realize that our advertisers are in a constant struggle to keep their marketing messages in line with customer needs. With traditional advertising, clients may have to communicate with numerous individuals to ensure that their creative is changed across multiple markets and mediums. We are providing a medium that encourages change rather than hindering it.
‘An airline, for example, could change prices or destinations in all 80 TV Listings Channel markets at the same time, without having to call 80 different newspapers or 80 different television stations.’
