Personalized ads on cable TV

Saul Hansell reports that MusicChoice on cable TV will start doing personalized advertising:

It will be the first company to display commercials that are selected for each user based on behavior. Using a special computer installed in each cable "head end" - the control center for each neighborhood - the system will track each user's music video choices to deduce demographic information. Different sorts of people, even neighbors, will be shown different commercials. "If we see that you listen to soft rock, and we know what else you picked, we know you are an over-35 female," said David Del Beccaro, the chief executive of Music Choice.

This sort of targeting is common on the Internet, but it has not been used in cable television until now.

Looks like this isn't quite able to work at the individual level, just at the neighborhood level. And it's doing demographic targeting, not personalizing to individual interests (e.g. categories like soft rock or even particular subgenres, artists, or related songs).

Nevertheless, an interesting new development in personalized advertising.