Comcast Media Center's Radiance unit is introducing a service to let advertising agencies and production firms deliver spot ads over the Internet, which the company claimed will cost less and provide quicker turnaround than alternatives.
The Radiance AdDelivery service provides delivery of spot ads in both standard- and high-definition formats. Today most HD spots are delivered on physical tapes.
"It's meant to electronically deliver ads from the post-production houses and ad agencies into all the outlets that run those ads," said Comcast Media Center chief operating officer Gary Traver. That group includes broadcast networks and affiliates, cable networks and cable operators conducting local ad-insertion.
The service will compete with satellite-based media-delivery service providers, such as DG FastChannel. "Satellite is multicast, so it's good as a one-to-many distribution," Traver said. "The Internet is good for many-to-many distribution."
AdDelivery can automate the spot-distribution process, and provides the ability to automatically transcode an ad spot into the format used by the network or distributor receiving the creative.
CMC announced the acquisition of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Radiance for about $5 million in October 2008.
Radiance offers a suite of file-delivery systems used to manage and simplify the distribution of large proprietary files over private networks and the public Internet.
