The deal will allow SMG to be the first agency network to provide its clients with the ability to address relevant advertising messages, including the right to be the first to identify the audiences that best fit their clients' needs for addressability.

The agency will also serve as an advisor to DIRECTV to help enhance and refine the service, a role SMG has played for many early trials.

As part of the advertising deal brokered by SMGx, the trading arm of SMG, media agency's clients will be able to segment their ads on a national level to selected consumers based on multiple factors including geography and customer segmentations, as well as third-party sources and the marketers' consumer databases.

The consulting segment of the SMG/DIRECTV relationship begins immediately, with the addressable ad technology set to begin testing in 2011. After testing is complete, DIRECTV will deploy household addressable advertising capability to the nearly 10 million customers expected to have DVRs, with 25 of the cable networks.

Laura Desmond, CEO of SMG, said: “As a result of this partnership with DIRECTV, we can now invest our clients' dollars in addressable messaging at the national level. We believe this is the tipping point, an entirely new marketplace is being created and shaped that will increase marketing effectiveness.”

Tracey Scheppach, senior vice president/innovations director at SMGx, said: “At SMG, we've run the numbers and feel confident that the creation of a viable national addressable platform can infuse $10 billion in incremental revenue into the television marketplace as its appeal is universal and has the ability to bring a whole new class of marketers to the medium.”

Will the deal deliver household-addressable advertising to customer households?

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