17th November 2008, Mumbai, India – Embedded advertising specialist MirriAd, and Endemol, one of the world’s largest independent television production companies, have launched a joint venture to exploit embedded advertising opportunities in the Indian broadcast television market. Endemol’s broadcasting partners will now be able to deliver product and brand placement opportunities that are fully incorporated within core programming.

Endemol Logo

MirriAd’s patented ZoneSense™ solution will be used to insert simple branded objects such as props, backdrops and signage, or sophisticated dynamic ads incorporating video and interactive elements, into video content. The brand references are seamlessly embedded and appear as if they had been incorporated in the original production. Embedded advertising provides broadcasters and advertisers with an entirely new way to expose brands to target consumers. It creates a compelling advertising environment in which the viewer is fully engaged. The brand references can’t be skipped or ignored – they are an intrinsic element of the viewing experience, rather than a distraction.

Endemol India’s head of corporate development & strategic business development Ankush Patel, commented, “Traditional product placement is a very well established and successful model in the Indian broadcast market but it is time consuming, the returns are difficult for advertisers to assess in the pre-production phase and the value inevitably diminishes over time. In contrast, embedding advertising within existing content takes us to a higher level of sophistication and removes the uncertainty and expense associated with the established model.

“MirriAd’s technology enables placement opportunities to be identified automatically and gives advertisers complete control over where and when their brand references appear. Furthermore, they have the opportunity to time insertions according to campaign requirements, just as they would with ‘slot’ based advertising.”

“Endemol’s credentials in the Indian market are very well established,” said Mark Popkiewicz, CEO of MirriAd. “Its ‘Bigg Boss’ and ‘Fear Factor’ productions are the flagship content that have taken Viacomm18’s ‘Colors’ channel to the number two spot in India in just ten weeks. That sort of success, and their established relationships, make Endemol the ideal partner to bring embedded advertising to one of the biggest broadcast television markets in the world.”

MirriAd’s unique ZoneSenseTM technology allows any video to be automatically scanned for suitable advertising zones. These zones are then tracked frame by frame for the duration that they are visible, being tracked for motion, blur and brightness for every pixel within the frame. Any brand or image inserted into one of these pre-tracked zones inherits all of the same blur, reflection and brightness attributes of the original material, making the insertion look real and as though it was part of the original shoot.

Advertisers can view an inventory of video files looking for the video, or set of videos, that best meets their campaign needs. Using MirriAd’s highly secure online services an advertiser may select their preferred zones, insert their brand images and view a low quality stream of the embedded advertising video before they commit to a final, high quality version.

For further information please contact:

Katharine Simon or Ian Hood, Babel PR

E.       MirriAd@babelpr.com
T.       +44 (0) 20 7434 5550
W.      www.babelpr.com

About MirriAd Limited
MirriAd seamlessly embeds advertising into any video content, as if it was always there. The company’s solutions allow content owners to effectively monetise their assets and deliver a means by which brands can capitalise on the worldwide shift from the analogue broadcast model to multi-platform, on-demand digital video delivery.

London based MirriAd is the first and only company that has the ability to embed advertising, words, images and interactive hyperlinks cost-effectively, in small and large volume digital content and to a high quality on any platform using its proprietary ZoneSense™, technology.

MirriAd is funded by venture capital funds including London Seed Capital, Oxford Technology Management and South East Growth Fund and by private investors led by Seraphim Capital.
For more information: www.mirriad.com

MirriAd was recently named in Library House’s MediaTech top 100 list, which lists Europe’s hottest private media technology companies, likely to have the biggest impact on the industry.

About Endemol
Endemol is a global leader in entertainment programming comprising an international network of companies that spans 25 countries on five continents.

We produce premium entertainment for the world’s major broadcasters, creating content that plays across a range of media platforms including television, mobile phones and the Internet.

This includes scripted (drama, comedy and soap operas), non-scripted (reality TV entertainment, game shows and talent shows) and digital media (online games, tailor made shows for mobile, video clips and streaming etc).
Endemol’s companies around the world have creative teams that are continuously developing new formats and entertainment brands, which are shared across the Endemol network.

Over the last five years we have on average created approximately 100 new formats each year. Endemol now has a library of over 2200 non-scripted formats and more than 200 scripted titles. For more on Endemol’s output visit the Endemol Sales website.

Endemol is owned by a consortium consisting of Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Mediaset Group and Cyrte Group.