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Ad Supported TV Enhanced by Personalization

Telephony reports that advertising-supported television isn�t going away anytime soon, but it will be dramatically changing, executives at the National Cable & Telecommunications show.

The spread of video to the Internet and mobile phones, the proliferation of digital video recorders and the shift of ad dollars from TV to the Internet are all having an impact on traditional thirty-second and one-minute advertising slots which have paid for TV programming to date.

Content providers can�t fight these trends because they are consumer-driven, said David Zaslav, president of NBC Universal Studios, but they will have to adjust. One of the expected changes is increased focus or targeting of ads. Cable companies already do digital ad insertion that puts local ads onto their digital networks at the local hub. Later this year, Terayon, the leading provider of digital ad insertion equipment, will trial adding local content to national ads, said Kanaiya Vasani, vice president of marketing.

�The next step is demographic targeting,� he said. �We will stream multiple ads to the set-top, and the set-top will pick the right one, depending on who is watching.� Telephone companies are already planning to do similar focused advertising on their IPTV platforms.

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