Guest feature
Q&A WITH TIM DALY
Tim Daly is executive vice pres- Q : Was there anything else that led you to Teletrax?
ident and chief information
officer at ITN Networks A : We like that they produce outage reports. It’s hard, if
(www.itnnetworks.com), a you don’t see a spot running, to know if there was a
national media sales company problem with the verification technology or with the sta-
that develops and provides tion... It’s important to know the difference: if we missed
custom-designed national units in Chicago last week, was it because of bad weather
television and multimedia affecting the monitors or was it because the station
networks. ITN utilizes a plat- actually did not run the unit.
form of proprietary technolo-
gy, exclusive research, a locally- Third-party verification in general is so important, espe-
targeted distribution model cially with so many distribution points, zones and chan-
and affiliated partnerships to nels. The openness in terms of all the information we
provide advertisers with need is also important, as is the service aspect. Teletrax is
strategic, consumer-focused, custom national networks, always available to answer questions and meet our
accompanied by the highest level of accountability. That needs.
need led to ITN’s affiliation with Teletrax, starting in 2006.
Q : Has your work with Teletrax highlighted any other
Q : What need or issue caused you to pursue a broadcast significant issue or opportunity areas for your business?
verification service?
A : We work with several big national brands – Pfizer,
A : The agencies we work with wanted a higher level of Colgate, Procter & Gamble, to name a few. They send us
accountability than they were getting. We were looking their commercials, we encode them, and then we send
for a service that would provide us with the information them along to the stations.
we needed, more quickly.
A problem arises when the brand itself is doing a test –
Q : How long was ITN’s process of seeking out the right Mars or Dove Soap might be testing their own verifica-
verification service to meet your and your clients’ needs? tion, and the tape comes to us with encoding already.
We can’t encode over it, and agencies can’t always send
A : We spent about a year researching and testing with over a clean master tape right away.
various services. We’d actually been looking at verification
as a tool for us to use since 1993, and we did some exten- At this time, Teletrax does not have the ability to provide
sive tests in 1997, but the technology just wasn’t there yet. you with multiple encoding streams. This would give us
a big leg up on our competitors and would continue to
Q : Why did you choose Teletrax? do so as the industry goes towards rating commercials
A : Frankly, Teletrax had the best results. Both with their Q : What are some of the biggest challenges you foresee
technology and their responsiveness. We liked the ability in your industry?
they provide to go on the web and get different reports.
A : Probably the biggest change coming up from our per-
Another major factor is that we encode and traffic a fair spective is the proliferation of stations and channels.
amount of new commercials each week. Teletrax was by We’re expanding our offerings in the fourth quarter to
far the easiest and best production process for moving include local cable news channels like New York 1 and
through that procedure and confirming accurately what CN8, as well as components of DirecTV and EchoStar’s
was actually being aired. And, since we operate in the news channels. A large part of the challenges we face is
national and syndicated arena, the fact that they can get being able to keep up with all those choices and to be
us data so quickly is a great advantage as well. able to monitor them.
“We try and track or electronically monitor as many things as we can.
We measure down to minute, market-by-market details to find out
whether NBC's 232 stations are fulfilling obligations to run promotions,
and which promos are working.”
Scot Chastain, VP of affiliate advertising and promotion services, NBC Entertainment, Jack Myers Media Business Report, June 20, 2007
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