Charter Dynamic OnDemand pilots in St. Louis

U.S. cable operator Charter Communications Inc. announced Nov. 20 the launch of the field pilot in St. Louis for its Dynamic OnDemand, which provides real-time ad insertion in video-on-demand.

The field pilot, deployed in late October, involves 300,000 Charter OnDemand subscribers in the St. Louis metropolitan region. Improving the VOD advertising business model, it allows advertisers to splice fresh ads into on-demand content. Ad agencies Ogilvy North America and mediaedge:cia each have clients participating in the pilot.

St Louis is the largest media market to date to deploy dynamic on demand advertising. This announcement follows the completion of Charter's lab trial in which advertising was dynamically inserted into on demand programs, enabling individual ad copy to be refreshed and rotated among viewer sessions within minutes.

In late July, digital technology provider Atlas along with VOD and digital cable insertion company C-COR partnered to co-develop the on-demand television advertising lifecycle technology now being used by Charter.

Long-term strategy for use of the technology by the cable operator will let all advertisers on Charter OnDemand immediately direct-targeted messages to a targeted audience, reducing lead time. Previously, video on-demand advertising was tied to specific content, forcing advertisers to commit to a lead time of several weeks and run generic copy.