The Change Mariner

Here Come the Start Ups to Help Target TV Ads in a PVR World

TVPredictions:
Visible World, a technology and media service company that has developed an effective solution for getting consumers to watch TV ads, today announced that it has received $8 million in second round venture capital financing led by RVC L.P., the former venture capital arm of Reuters. Participants in this financing also include first round investors Grey Ventures, WPP Group, Leucadia, Edgewater, as well as new investors Comcast Interactive Capital and SoundView Ventures.

Visible World's second round investors decided to participate in the funding because they strongly believe the company has developed a service that the marketplace is in desperate need of - i.e. a way to help advertisers keep viewers from skipping commercials. Called IntelliSpot®, the system allows advertisers to finely customize TV commercials so they are more relevant to multiple segments of viewers, as opposed to one mass audience.

...Developed by Visible World and SeaChange, IntelliSpot lets advertisers create and deliver more meaningful ads for specific markets, zip codes, buying groups, times of day, and in the future, households. Through the IntelliSpot toolkit, commercials are easily broken down into all their individual media elements -- i.e. video, audio, text, and graphics -- and then assembled into a variety of unique ads, based on the advertiser's requirements, at or near the point of delivery. The result is dozens, hundreds or even thousands of commercials.