Virgin Media plans launch of targeted advertising

Mark Brandon, Virgin Media’s commercial director, said last week that the company’s targeted advertising trial rollout was imminent. Speaking at last Wednesday’s Future TV Advertising conference in London, Brandon said that Virgin’s video on demand advertising had already been an unqualified success.

Speaking to Digital TV Europe Brandon said that Virgin Media was taking its move into advanced advertising “one step at a time” but that it would launch a full-scale service in 2013.

“I know there is demand for this,” said Brandon. “Agencies back it and certainly advertisers back it even more.” Although Brandon did not reveal specific details about the degree of targeting or the type of clients involved, he said that advertisers were likely to look to target across fairly broad categories to begin with. “You could target to the micro level but the big advertisers only want a little bit more than they have at the moment,” he said.

The next day Jamie West, director of AdSmart & commercial development at BSkyB, demonstrated the new Sky AdSmart which they plan to launch mid 2013.