Story matters to AMC; so do new marketing mechanisms

From examiner.com
http://www.examiner.com/x-14278-SF-TV-Examiner~y2009m6d17-Story-matters-to-AMC-so-do-new-marketing-mechanisms

Story matters to AMC; so do new marketing mechanisms.

Something called Audience Identity Metric may yet redefine the term 'personal ad', if not the term 'acronym'.
AIM, as it's unfortunately known, is out of testing and coming fully-formed to basic cable. Its premise: to further isolate consumers inside a demographic. Its interface: AMC, formerly a wasteland of movies-you've-seen-twice-already, now home to high-end original shows like "Mad Men" and rebranded as a network "where story matters". If you're a regular viewer, prepare to be peddled to in ways far less generic than you might be familiar with.

AIM, like those kinds of software infantry known as spiders, is designed to get in your personal space. Essentially it enables microadvertising. Whereas before advertisers pitched mainly in the macro--tying demographically-skewed products to movies of any corresponding genre--AIM theoretically allows them to narrow the focus even more.

According to Advertising Age, which reported the story this week, Shell-Pennzoil is AMC's first client using AIM. Instead of pressing its product during movies typically (or stereotypically) big with 25-to-54 year-old fuelcentric males, like Die Hard or The Alamo, AIM found a more diffuse way. It attached ads to softer, more varied movies covering a range of genres.

AMC partnered with Nielsen for its test run; by all accounts the system produced better, more precise ad spots simply by going a step or two beyond the obvious. A member of a key demographic might be more likely to watch one movie than another, for instance, but the same person logically has second and third choices.

Naturally all this flies in the face of traditional market research. Psychographic data, which centers on observed behavior, is generally more fluid than demographic data, which is the reason so many marketers distrust it. But psychographics are the future of advertising; at any rate they drive it on the Internet and television may just now be catching up.

What's operative is whether or not ads that are more and more personalized will keep the average couch-potato from clicking over to South Park. For guys watching Fatal Attraction it may not be all Tampax and furniture polish much longer. The things you like are coming to you and it doesn't matter so much what you're glued to. Affixed to AMC's impressive transition from garbage network to trendsetter, AIM is at least noteworthy for being cool. If only the acronym weren't so reflective of the gay nineties.