Sky AdSmart launch backed by Tesco, RBS, Audi and over 40 other brands
Over 40 consumer brands, including Tesco, RBS and Audi, have lent their backing to Sky’s newly launched addressable advertising service, Sky AdSmart, following a six-month trial.
A number of brands, notably Citroen and Dial-A-Flight, are planning to roll out campaigns using the service over the course of 2014.
AdSmart, available in a fifth of UK households, tailors commercial ad breaks based upon the viewer’s profile and location, enabling advertisers to better target campaigns while also opening up channels to local businesses unable to afford national campaigns.
An expanded sales force split into five regional teams based in London, the South West, Midlands, North and Scotland has been created specifically for this purpose.
Andrew Griffith, Sky’s managing director, commercial businesses and chief financial officer, said: “With Sky AdSmart, we want to make TV advertising work better for viewers and advertisers. By enabling advertisers to better segment the TV audience, Sky AdSmart has the potential to open up TV advertising to many more brands and businesses. This helps both the brands that previously thought TV too broad a medium, as well as local advertisers who felt that TV wasn’t previously accessible to them.”
Sky states that one quarter of brands to have signed up so far are either new to TV advertising or had previously quit the market.
The backbone of AdSmart is dynamic ad server technology, built-in to Sky+ set -top boxes, which pulls in multiple different campaign creatives and overlays numerous different data sets ensuring the ads sent are personally relevant to each individual home. It can offer advertisers granular targeting including location, affluence, children’s ages, life stage, and financial outlook. It will also overlay third-party data from Experian.