National Cable Communications (NCC) and Mixpo have launched an initiative to let cable advertisers extend their TV commercials to the web. This is not aimed at creating pre/post roll video ads like you might think, but videos as display ads in place of traditional banners.
NCC is jointly owned by three of the largest cable companies – Comcast Cable, Cox Communications, and Time Warner Cable. This makes up a good-sized chunk of television advertising in the US.
“Through Mixpo, national and regional TV advertisers can now run their existing TV ads in quality display inventory on cable operator ISP Web sites, and make them highly interactive on the Web,” says Joe Grisafi, NCC’s vice president of digital media and advanced advertising strategies.
“Local advertising isn’t only about small and medium sized businesses. It’s also about national and regional brands driving local response,” says Anupam Gupta, president and CEO of Mixpo. “NCC has the largest Spot Cable advertising sales force in the U.S. and now also represents one of the largest locally targeted online ad networks. It just makes perfect sense to bring together this cross-platform advertising solution to their national and regional clients.”
The news of major cable providers taking their advertisers’ ads to the web shows that display ads are still a significant element in not just online advertising, but the big picture. AdWeek, citing data from Adify, says that the display ad market is stabilizing, at least in some categories, after being hit by the economy.
“Though it cannot claim comprehensive insight into pricing trends for the entire display marketplace — for example, it lacks data from many top publishers as well as the largest portals and search engines — Adify does have unique visibility into the online advertising ecosystem,” says AdWeek’s Mike Shields of a report from Adify. “The Cox TMI-owned firm manages over 200 networks, representing inventory on 12,000 sites which reach nearly 70 million U.S. users.”
