Channel 4 Sales launches data led commercial initiative for 4oD

6 February 2013

Channel 4 today announced the launch of an innovative new commercial data initiative which will offer advertisers sub-demographic targeting on its market-leading video on demand service, 4oD.

This is Channel 4’s first commercial data offer to the market which harnesses first party viewer registration data from its database of over 6 million registered users, building upon the programme launched by David Abraham in 2011.

From this week, Channel 4 will begin a month long selection process to secure 12 data partners to form a pioneer group to engage in the first stage of this initiative – half of which will be new to digital advertising. The partners will reach a broad range of client categories and demographics to deliver key criteria such as minimum investment, campaign flight and demographic targeting.  

The advertisers will be offered targeting against the same audiences that they buy on TV, such as 16-34, ABC1 and Housewives audiences on 4OD. During this first stage, Channel 4 will invest in a number of case studies to evaluate campaign effectiveness, incremental reach and greater insight into video on demand (VOD) user behaviour as well as access to Channel 4’s viewer research panel.

The pioneer group results from this ground-breaking initiative will be shared with the industry later this year.

Jonathan Lewis, Head of Digital & Partnership Innovation at Channel 4 said: “We’re really excited to introduce this new data pool initiative to the market which will showcase the benefits of improved targeting and the effectiveness of our 4oD platform to new advertisers – and enhance our existing clients’ digital engagement with audiences through greater targeting.

“Following an initial campaign evaluation of the pioneer group, we will be sharing the commercial benefits of targeting and our unique digital ad products.”

This announcement follows a number of new data initiatives presented at Channel 4‘s Upfront event last November.

Recently Channel 4 launched interactive ad format Adapt, to its existing portfolio of successful iVOD formats. For the first time Adapt allows advertisers to target advertising creative directly to know users on its database, based upon their age, gender and location. For example, an advertiser will now be able to serve targeted creative to the end user, referencing the right products and store location based upon Channel 4’s data.