First Advertising Trial Launches on Virgin Media's On Demand TV Platform

First Advertising Trial Launches on Virgin Media's On Demand TV Platform

- Rentrak Selected To Measure Content Performance -

PORTLAND, Ore., Oct. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Virgin Media (NASDAQ:VMED) today announced the first ever dynamic advertising trial on its on demand TV platform. Leading brands including Kelloggs, John Lewis and Royal Mail, will have their ads broadcast around selected on demand programs from Virgin Media TV, Channel 4 and Warner TV. The three month trial will take place across north London beginning this week.

The ad insertion technology, SeaChange's AdPulse system, inserts ads before and after on demand content in real time, allowing campaigns to be kept up-to-date and specific to time of day or region. Virgin Media's trial will match ads to program genres, test a range of ad lengths, including single 30 second pre-rolls, consecutive pre-rolls and end rolls, and update campaigns weekly. The number of ads will be capped and there will be a limit on the volume of programs that will have ads placed around them.

Virgin Media is also working with On Demand Group (ODG) for content aggregation and selected Rentrak Corporation (NASDAQ:RENT) , along with ODG, to measure content performance throughout the trial and better understand the impact of on demand advertising on viewer behavior.

"The relationship with Virgin Media is a milestone for Rentrak as it marks our first European partner in the Video on Demand space," said Ken Papagan, president and chief strategy officer at Rentrak Corporation. "Virgin Media's advanced advertising trial demonstrates Rentrak's unsurpassed reputation for providing timely, actionable data which allows our partners to make the critical business decisions that maximize their return on investment."

Mark Schweitzer, chief commercial officer at Virgin Media said: "Virgin Media has pioneered on demand TV in the UK and we continue to innovate with new content, interactivity and functionality. As consumer usage of on demand continues to build, this trial will help us explore the best ways to reach a large and growing audience with engaging and relevant advertising."

Virgin Media is the UK's leading on demand TV service with 4600 hours of content. 50 percent of Virgin Media's 3.5 million TV customers watch on demand regularly and access to this service is provided for free*, regardless of what TV package they subscribe to. Usage continues to grow with 45 million views in August, up from 34 million views in January. This is an increase of 33 percent in less than a year and takes total views of on-demand content to 314 million this year.

ids and Channel 4 Agency Sales are managing the advertising space for the trial with advertisers including: Kelloggs, Lurpak, O2, John Frieda, COI Army, Alberto, General Motors, Royal Mail, Littlewoods, Bodyform, John Lewis and Anchor.

About Rentrak Corporation

Rentrak Corporation, based in Portland, Oregon, is an information management company serving clients in the media, entertainment, retail and advertising industries. The company's Entertainment Essentials(R) suite of services is redefining media measurement in the digital broadband era. Entertainment Essentials provides customers with near-real-time, actionable insight into performance of content distributed over a wide variety of modern media technologies. Available by license or subscription, each Entertainment Essentials application allows executives to analyze detailed industry-wide and title-specific data to make decisions that enhance the bottom line and provide competitive advantage. For further information, please visit Rentrak's corporate Web site at http://www.rentrak.com/

About Virgin Media

Virgin Media is an innovative and pioneering UK entertainment and communications business. As the UK's first quad-play of TV, broadband, phone and mobile, plus the most advanced TV on demand service, all delivered through its unique fibre-optic cable network, consumers can get everything they need from one company. Virgin Media launched the UK's first high definition TV service, is the only TV platform to carry BBC iPlayer, and offers a high- specification, HD-ready V+ personal video recorder. Virgin Media is one of the UK's largest residential broadband providers, the largest virtual mobile network operator and the second-largest provider of pay TV and home phone.

Virgin Media owns two content businesses - Virgin Media Television (VMTV) and sit-up. VMTV owns seven entertainment channels - Virgin1, Living, Living 2, Bravo, Bravo 2, Challenge and Trouble - and is a 50% partner in UKTV which consists of nine channels including Dave, G.O.L.D, Watch and UKTV History. sit-up runs retail TV channels bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auction tv.

Virgin Media is the largest Virgin company in the world and has almost 10 million customers. To find out more visit http://www.virginmedia.com/presscentre.

* Customers have to pay to view movies and depending on what package they are on, may have to pay for music videos and long-running series.

    Contact for Rentrak:                   Contact for Virgin Media:    Amanda Bartz / Sallie Olmsted          Emma Hutchinson    (310) 854-8151 / (310) 854-8124        +44 (0) 20 7909 2022    abartz@rogersandcowan.com              Emma.hutchinson@virginmedia.co.uk  

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact:

Source: Rentrak Corporation

CONTACT: Amanda Bartz, +1-310-854-8151, abartz@rogersandcowan.com, or
Sallie Olmsted, +1-310-854-8124, both for Rentrak Corporation; or Emma
Hutchinson of Virgin Media, +44 (0) 20 7909 2022,
Emma.hutchinson@virginmedia.co.uk

Web site: http://www.rentrak.com/

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Profile: International Entertainment