Thursday, April 30, 2015

Viacom Unveils 'Viacom Vantage'

Original Viacom Inc. Press Release via Business Wire:

Viacom Unveils 'Viacom Vantage'

A Revolutionary Data-Driven & Predictive Ad Solution Enabling Advertisers to Reach Custom Audiences Across Viacom's Media Networks

Viacom Vantage Pilots with Select Clients, Amplifying their Reach with Target Consumers

April 29, 2015 05:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Viacom (NASDAQ: VIAB, VIA) today announced Viacom Vantage, an innovative, data-driven ad product that enables advertisers to reach their custom targets at the program level across the Viacom Media Networks portfolio. This pioneering new approach transforms traditional media planning and offers advertisers more choice, more flexibility and increased accountability. Through a combination of enhanced consumer targeting and a deep understanding of how various audience segments consume content across our platforms, Viacom Vantage predicts which content will perform the best for our clients across MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, Nickelodeon, CMT, Spike, TV Land and Logo.

"Our guiding principle is to offer best-in-class and client-centered products for our advertising partners," said Jeff Lucas, Head of Sales for Viacom Media Networks. "Viacom Vantage is our latest cutting edge product to deliver on that promise by enabling our clients to close the gap between how they define their true segments and where their messages can work best in reaching that audience on our shows."

Developed in-house over a year ago, Viacom Vantage's beta version was successfully piloted with a select group of national partners including Horizon Media. Viacom Vantage offered each of these clients deep data integrations, customized capabilities and took on operational and inventory management efforts to drive unique media plans and help set new industry standards.

"When Viacom came to us with this new ad solution, we recognized immediately it was a novel approach that could greatly build upon the effectiveness of our client's investment," said Dave Campanelli, Sr. Vice President, Director of National Television for Horizon Media. "The results far exceeded our expectations by directly identifying and reaching our targeted consumers and providing us with precisely the right programming that would generate the highest return."

Now in its second year and available at scale to clients, Viacom Vantage is the result of years of strategic investment in data, proprietary research and ongoing optimization to build out new predictive models. It goes far beyond the traditional age and gender demographics and provides the capability to integrate attitudinal and behavioral segments with other off-the-shelf segments by using a unique algorithm that is custom fit to each advertiser's goals.

"Our holistic and highly customizable approach to data is far ahead of the industry curve and leverages the unparalleled social and digital reach of our programming to help unlock insights into the commercial and digital behaviors of our audiences," said Kern Schireson, Executive Vice President, Data Strategy and Consumer Intelligence at Viacom Media Networks. "By effectively merging our expansive data footprint with syndicated research, we can continuously optimize media plans to integrate our advertisers' messaging on the exact right shows at the exact right time."

Viacom Vantage is the newest offering from Viacom as the company continues to advance innovative, first-to-market solutions. Last year, Viacom Velocity introduced Echo, an insights-driven approach to harnessing our massive social footprint for content creation, distribution, amplification and optimization. Echo is powered by the Echo Social Graph, a groundbreaking, analytics platform that delivers measured earned media for our partners.

About Viacom

Viacom is home to premier global media brands that create compelling television programs, motion pictures, short-form video, apps, games, consumer products, social media and other entertainment content for audiences in more than 165 countries and territories. Viacom's media networks, including Nickelodeon, CMT, Nick Jr., TeenNick, Nicktoons, TV Land, Nick at Nite, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, SPIKE, Logo, BET, CENTRIC, Channel 5 (UK), Tr3s, Paramount Channel and VIVA, reach a cumulative 3.2 billion television subscribers worldwide. Paramount Pictures is a major global producer and distributor of filmed entertainment.

For more information about Viacom and its businesses, visit www.viacom.com. Keep up with Viacom news by following Viacom's blog at blog.viacom.com and Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/viacom.

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