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Companies are racing to build complex systems for targeting TV ads, betting consumers will prefer them and they’ll save advertisers money.

A customer inspects flat-screen televisions. Cable and satellite companies are testing and deploying new systems designed to show households highly targeted ads.

Some are starting to spill out interesting data to support their case.

One company, Simulmedia, says that set-top boxes that saw a targeted promotion tuned in two to three times more to the show being advertised than set-top boxes that didn’t receive a targeted promotion.

The New York company doesn’t target the ads to set-top boxes but buckets set-top boxes into groups based on what content they watch and recommends what programs advertisers should advertise on if they want to reach a certain types of viewer; then they can determine which set-top boxes saw an ad and whether those boxes tuned into the show.

The company’s chief executive Dave Morgan says the process cuts out “waste” for advertisers and rescues consumers for seeing too many irrelevant ads.

Other targeted TV trials have examined tune-in, i.e. whether consumers actually watched the commercial.

A test of targeted TV ads by Comcast in 2009 found that homes receiving targeted advertising tuned away from the commercials 32% less of the time than homes that received non-targeted ads.


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