For TV ads, future is targeting niches

What sort of show is ''Into the West," the miniseries that starts tonight on TNT? The answer depends on where you saw the message.

The ads that ran during the ''Desperate Housewives" finale promised a heart-wrenching family saga.

The ads that ran during the NBA playoffs hyped action-packed battle scenes.

The ads that ran during ''Smallville" promoted teen idols Skeet Ulrich and Keri Russell.

In all, TNT has marketed its epic series six different ways, to viewers with different attitudes about TV. It's a leap beyond pursuit of the 18-to-34 crowd into the realm researchers know as ''psychographics": tapping into viewers' brains and behavior. And it represents the future of TV marketing.

Thanks to detailed databases and niche cable channels, TV viewers increasingly are being sliced and segmented; one company is using ratings data to identify their spending tendencies, along with their sex and age. And new technology is now allowing marketers to customize the ads themselves. In Massachusetts, Comcast Corp. is running Coors beer ads that feature different endings, depending on where viewers live.

The same brand of personalized advertising that flourishes on the Internet is finding its way to TV. And as TiVo and on-demand services threaten TV ads in general, some media-watchers believe this could be part of the salvation: ads aimed not just at specific age brackets, but at towns, blocks -- even specific people.

''What people are skipping over when they're watching something they've TiVoed is irrelevant advertising," said David Ernst, executive vice president of the media planning and buying agency Initiative Media Worldwide, who predicts the rise of customized ads in the next 10 years.

Targeted ad drives are a sign, in part, of how much marketers increasingly know about consumers. The six-pronged ''Into the West" campaign stemmed from a massive viewer database and research ''much more detailed than focus groups," said Steve Koonin, the network's chief operative officer.

TNT's targets range from ''History Lovers" -- adult men regaled with History Channel ads about the Battle of Wounded Knee -- to ''Truth-Seekers," told in the New York Observer that this Western is partly shown from the Native American perspective.

Koonin dubbed another group ''Generation Why" after a conversation with his 17-year-old son, who asked why he should bother to watch a six-part, 12-hour history lesson. The answer? Hip young stars who could relate their characters' struggles to young people.

''Normally, television is sold one-size-fits-all," Koonin said. ''We have a very custom-fitted approach where we're matching message and media."

That concept, known as ''market segmentation," is itself nothing new. San Diego-based Claritas Inc., one of the field's pioneers, started in 1974, helping politicians target voters. The company divides the population into 66 socioeconomic segments with memorably catty names, such as ''Money & Brains," ''Park Bench Seniors," and ''Back Country Folks."

Using data from the US Census, consumer surveys, warranty registration cards, and public records, it offers educated guesses about each segment's spending patterns. Residents of ''Pools & Patios" and ''Middleburg Managers" might both be mostly middle-aged whites, but the former group is likely to drive Volkswagen New Beetles, the latter Toyota Camry Solaras.

Now, Claritas is applying those partitions to TV, cross-referencing their segments with Nielsen ratings data. Soon, company executives say, they'll know not just the ages of viewers watching ''The Apprentice: Martha Stewart," but the sorts of vacations they might take and the magazines they might buy.

For the consumer, that should be good news, said Robert Nascenzi, Claritas's president.

''I'm not getting bombarded with messages I'm not interested in," he said. ''If I can get less junk mail and I can get more of the appropriate ads on TV that I'm interested in, that's good for me."

Still, some viewers are already chafing at perceived infringements on their privacy. And a serious hurdle for personalized ads, Ernst said, are restrictions that prevent cable companies from reporting too much individual data -- and the companies' unwillingness to test those boundaries.

But people seem willing to give up some anonymity in exchange for customized ads, said J. Walker Smith, president of Yankelovich Partners Inc., a North Carolina marketing research and consulting firm.

''For the most part, privacy is negotiable," he said. ''If you give people what they want and what they view as a fair exchange, then they're willing to share all kinds of private information."

And targeted marketing, Smith said, has been proven to work.

''Response rates do go up," Smith said. ''You're not just talking about the lowest common denominator anymore. You're talking about something that really matters to me."

It's unclear how quickly targeted TV ads will become the norm. It's a far costlier way to advertise, Smith said. And some question whether TV advertising will endure at all, since TiVo and similar ''personal video recorders" make it so easy to skip commercials.

With 6.5 million personal recorders in American households and 15,000 more purchased every day, personalized ads may well be ''just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, ad-skipping being the iceberg," said Eric Schmitt, a senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge.

Nonetheless, customized ads are slowly entering the marketplace. Comcast offers advertisers the chance to change the last five seconds of an ad, or to swap out ads depending on the market: A car manufacturer could stick an SUV ad in a mountainous zone and a sedan in a city.

In Boston, Coors is using the technology to advertise promotional events on ''ESPN Sunday Night Baseball," directing viewers to different events depending on where they live, a Comcast spokeswoman said. Other companies have gone even further with Comcast's technology: Last year, New York and New Jersey Ford dealers sent nine different versions of an ad to different ZIP codes, based on demographics and income.

Further progress will depend on technological advances that reduce the cost and the logistical hurdles, Ernst said. But even the earliest efforts, he said, are a sign of things to come.

It's ''a compelling idea, being able to target people based on the information you have about who they are," he said. ''It's nice to see this start to get the ball rolling."

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com.