Seth Haberman On Smarter Spots

Seth Haberman is the founder and president of NY-based Visible World, a company developing software and services that allow ad agencies and producers to create multiple versions of TV commercials that appeal to different demographic slices of TV audiences. The end result is a dynamicism and customization that consumers have become accustomed to in Web advertising. The onetime CEO of Montage, Haberman also has applied concepts of nonlinear editing to commercial production and playout. The analog version of Visible World’s “IntelliSpot” system can target audiences on a sub-DMA level (zip code & zip code clusters). The digital version will address individual households. Visible World’s system is now in use at the New York Interconnect and at Adlink in LA.

Look at the model of what goes on the Web. They componentize ads and
put them together at the moment it is requested. That’s how
personalization works. When I go to Amazon.com, the Web page that I see
reflects my behavior with Amazon because the pieces that are put
together are put together for me. We’re applying the same sort of
thinking to video. The idea is that you don’t finish the spot until you
know the context of when and where it is being played. We toyed with
the idea of calling it "just-in-time advertising" so that if you build
it in a way that is smart enough you can delay the final decisions of
what to show. Do that and you break the barrier that’s prevented TV
from being real-time. Newspapers do this today. If you look at the back
page of The New York Times, J&R Music World has a big ad with
products and prices that change every day. These changes are reflective
of competitive pressures, what’s really hot, and what’s in stock. It’s
ironic that a product made of mashed wood pulp and delivered by
diesel-powered trucks is a more dynamic medium than TV. Visible World
gives you the flexibility to be relevant to the market conditions
(interest rates, weather, internal conditions inventory) and
competitors on television.

In addition, customizing a TV ad for the "who" is also important. TV
has ignored the who. Television grew up in an age where America was
white, heterosexual, Midwestern and had 2.2 kids. America swings
between being the melting pot and distinct cultures that want to hear
and see the brand within the context of their world. Personally, a
television ad could be giving away gold bars but if they’re playing
hip-hop music I’m going to change the channel before I hear the offer.
It’s dissonant to me, and then so is the brand. We challenge the idea
that there’s a universal expression of a brand as opposed to a
universal brand.

Marketers today have a lot of information about their customers that
can be used in TV advertising, and we have the tools to allow you to
use that information to create more powerful, relevant ads on
television.

I think the differences will come in the less-expensive parts of
production. Our marginal distinctions come from voice-over, music,
cutting things differently, and graphics. Maybe there will be some
additional coverage, but it is not the existential threat of a
television campaign. I think we might ask directors to think less about
technique than about being more exact in the way they do things.

We created this company because at the core, you see, I have big
objections to interactivity. It ruins storytelling. Show me any example
of an interactive application that can make me cry! In 30 seconds I can
make someone cry with a piece of film. We believe that storytelling has
the innate ability to convey certain types of messages. So our tools
and our approach to this is, how can you tell the same story different
ways?

To tell a story in advertising, we want the same story to appeal to the
different and varied needs of the buyers. By managing the efficient
production of multiple versions of the same scene, we can vary the same
story in a way that will be more relevant to the viewers. In my
observation, editors by nature make multiple cuts of the same scene,
and they’re not changing the story but they’re expressing things
differently. The core narrative is the thing that you have to protect.

Visible World has created tools that allow multiple versions to be
designed, produced, edited, and finished. We also have introduced
automation in every step possible, which makes the process manageable
and cost effective.

An editor can generate the first story and then he or an assistant
starts making some of the variations, or you can block out the rough
pieces and the editor comes in and fixes up the timing and makes it
look sexy. The beauty is there is more than one way to do it.