Time Warner Cable Upgrades Wisconsin and Eau Claire Local Advertising Capabilities with SkyConnect's Digital Ad Insertion
BOULDER, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 22, 1997--SkyConnect, a leader in digital ad insertion and advertising automation technologies, has been selected by Time Warner Cable to provide digital ad insertion technologies for nine cable head ends in its Eau Claire and Milwaukee service areas.
More than 270,000 Greater Milwaukee area cable television households and 30,000 in Eau Claire will have higher video quality on TV advertising. Advertisers for these regions will have faster turnaround for advertising distribution and Time Warner can increase local advertising revenues by increasing the number of channels available for local ad insertion.
"The bottom line is I now have a competitive advantage in my market," said Paul Goetzke, advertising sales manager for the Eau Claire region.
As Time Warner's needs increase, SkyConnect's scalable system will allow each location to increase their number of channels without a complete revamping of the system. The current configuration will take Milwaukee from a 12-16 channel unit to one that supports 20 channels. The company will take one week in April to switch Milwaukee's eight twenty-channel head ends to Mediaplex. Eau Claire's one head end will be installed during January.
Time Warner's selection is enhanced by the strategic partnership between SkyConnect and Digital Equipment Corporation, the acknowledged leader in MPEG-2 digital video server-technology. Digital's Alpha server is the technology core while SkyConnect provides cable industry expertise, handles custom software, hardware and other enhancements; marketing, installation and service and support.
"The technology will be valid for a very long time as we are at the front-end of the product cycle," added Goetzke. "SkyConnect's training and support made moving from analog to digital an easy transition."
The 64-bit Alpha chip technology made Mediaplex the product of choice. It can address 4 billion times more storage and process data 400 percent faster than standard 32 bit processors. All interaction with the system is done through easy-to-use graphical user interfaces.
Depending on the server model, insertion units can support 1 to 40 channels and can be daisy-chained for even more capacity. Its MPEG-2 encoding standard results in better picture quality and its interface supports all of the major traffic and billing systems.
"We wanted the best visual quality for the commercials we insert during our programming," said Time Warner's director of advertising sales in Milwaukee, Richard N. Olmsted. "Mediaplex gives us the technology we needed. This takes our quality control and operating efficiency to the highest level currently available."
Olmsted explained that the cable firm reviewed three equipment and service providers including SeaChange before selecting SkyConnect. "We wanted a client/server-based system rather than Pentium-based and SkyConnect provided that, along with strong customer service. We asked for some design changes and they responded immediately."
SkyConnect's chief executive officer, Michael Pohl, said: "Cable TV is experiencing explosive growth, yet many of the cable companies are still using technology 10 years old -- video tapes and VCRs. Our systems help cable companies turn out a better product, while at the same time cutting costs and increasing operating efficiency."
Time Warner Cable is the nation's second largest cable television operator currently serving, with affiliated companies, 12.1 million customers in 37 states. It is a unit of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. Time Warner Cable has served Milwaukee for more than 12 years, and Eau Claire for more than 30 years.
SkyConnect, founded in 1992, is headquartered in Boulder. The company focuses on providing technology solutions for advertising in the cable, broadcast, telephone and Internet industries. The company currently has two product offerings: Mediaplex, a fully scalable digital ad insertion platform serving one or multiple head ends for cable, and AdVergence, an online service to streamline the buying and selling of cable and Internet advertising.
SkyConnect is a North American value added reseller (VAR) of Mediaplex, manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation, providing 24 by 7 customer support services and custom application software enhancements. |
