What's Wrong with this Picture?

Attention How I Met Your Mother fans, be on the lookout for a very bad teacher. If you have been watching syndicated reruns of the popular series you may have noticed something different with some of the older episodes. Apparently ads for some current movies like Bad Teacher and Zookeeper have made their way into episodes from as early as 2006. How could an ad for a movie released in 2011 make its way into a HIMYM episode that was produced in 2006, you ask. Was it magic? No, not exactly! It turns out that 20th Century Fox Television, the studio distributor of HIMYM, has partnered with a company called SeamBI, which stands for Seamless Brand Integration and is responsible for digitally altering old episodes with new products and brands. SeamBI's CEO Roy Baharav calls his company an “advertising technology innovator.”  “What we do is we insert, very efficiently, brands into content in a natural way and in a way that is valuable to advertisers,” Baharav says. “So we find the balance between not compromising the integrity of the content and, on the other end, bring a lot of value to the advertiser.”

After seeing the pressure that DVR penetration was putting on the 30-second commercial, Baharav decided to do something about it. So in 2005, he started SeamBI, to provide advertisers another avenue to get their message across to their audience. It took over two years to fully develop the technology, according to Baharav. But in September 2009, it finally went on the air appearing in syndicated episodes of My Name is Earl, which is another 20th Century Fox Television property. After working their magic, SeamBI was able to place two to three insert opportunities (depending on the storyline) in each of the 96 episodes of My Name is Earl. SeamBI has also worked new brands and ads into the show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

The really interesting thing about this technology is that the advertising can be changed for different markets and can also be changed to a new advertisement in subsequent re-airings. The Bad Teacher ad placements in HIMYM, for example, were specific to the New York metropolitan area.

According to Baharav, SeamBI is already looking at the bigger picture with this technology. They have already started to look beyond syndicated reruns and have targeted broadcast and cable networks with this technology.  “Definitely I see this as something that is going to be a part of the future, as we see the pressure on the commercials keep increasing,” he says. “I think this is going to be a very popular alternative.”