This week, Rogers Video will become the first marketer to try out the innovative ‘Flex-Advertising’ introduced earlier this month by Corus Custom Networks, a division of Corus Entertainment. The cable biggie will use the service to change and update new release titles and dates on Corus’ TV Listings Channel.

The new service ‘makes television advertising as dynamic as Internet advertising,’ says Tyler Alton, VP/GM of CCN. Clients can change their ads as often as they like, keeping marketing messages current.

‘Clients simply log onto our extranet, make the necessary changes to their ads and confirm their requests. Then their ad is sent to broadcast on the TV Listings Channel,’ adds Angela Joyce, the company’s marketing manager. Typically, she explains, information that needs updating includes prices, dates or availability.

CCN’s full-service broadcast design team will create customized ad templates for Flex-Advertising clients and post them on the system — after which clients can manage evolving changes. The TV Listings Channel plays uninterrupted 24-hour channel guide information in a split-screen format that allows advertisers to run commercials of 15, 30, 60 or 90 seconds on the top half of the screen while the channel guide appears at the bottom. The channel reaches more than 1.8 million viewers each week in over 80 markets across B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.

As for marketing the new service, Joyce says her company ‘has identified national advertisers who change their print and on-screen creative regularly, and we are presenting customized pitches directly to them.’

One of the chief advantages with Flex-Advertising, says Joyce, is being able to measure the impact of any given ad in real time and to tweak it quickly when necessary. ‘An airline, for example, could change prices or destinations in all 80 TV Listings Channel markets at the same time, without having to call 80 different newspapers or 80 different television stations,’ she says.

From Media in Canada