Ad World Looks for Progress From NBCU-Comcast

Now that the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal is official, the ad community is clamoring for the world's largest TV content company to change the way $60.5 billion in TV ads have been bought and sold for decades. Media-buying executives are hoping Comcast-NBCU can finally make some progress on addressable and interactive advertising, technologies that have been tested for years but have yet to scale beyond a small household footprint. "The issue is where is media going, and it's clearly going to an on-demand platform," said Steve Farella, CEO of TargetCast, an independent media agency that buys ads for clients like Expedia.com, Hotels.com and 1-800-Flowers.com. "What I'm dying to be able to do and do it in a short period of time is advertise my clients' products, build that brand and at the same time tell that consumer where to get it. ... We need to quickly move out of the test phase. Comcast, with the largest MSO platform, cannot keep testing these things."