Ford Rolls Out VOD Advertising
Lost Remote reports today that Ford Motor Co. has recently launched a video on demand advertising campaign. It will run on Cablevision and Charter Communications cable systems and will reach about 4.5 million digital subscribers.
So what is it exactly? It will be available with other on-demand programming (by clicking on a Ford icon in that will be placed in the on-demand menu) and will include branded entertainment, 30-second ads, car reviews by Edmunds and video tours of some cars. The branded entertainment will include things like the Ironman competition, which is sponsored by Ford's Explorer.
Ford will pay the cable operators for leads generated, which include viewers who select options to receive more information and give permission to be contacted. The cable operators will also be able to track user behavior and offer the data to Ford for marketing purposes, which will be interesting to measure the success of delivering ads this way.
"We'll be able to find the features viewers focused on, what they didn't find interesting or even if an edit has too slow a pace," Ford's ad agent Brian Bos told Mediaweek. "We'll be able to adjust as we better understand what the consumer is trying to get out of the various segments."
The rest of us will have to wait and see how successful ad-supported VOD will be, but it represents an interesting area where advertising could play in the VOD space, which is heating up as cable operators begin to strengthen their offerings to compete with forthcoming IPTV services from telecoms.
