Infomercial company views expanded horizons on internet.

For 17 years, direct-response media specialist Mercury Media has been ensuring that the infomercials of self-help guru Anthony Robbins and acne fighters Katie Rodan and Kathy Fields are placed at just the right time, on the right channel and in the best markets to ensure order switchboards keep buzzing.

But when clients wanted to add radio or Internet to their media buy, Santa Monica based Mercury usually would refer them to another specialty buyer. That soon will change, thanks to a recent capital infusion from a private equity firm.

Mercury Media recently announced that it completed a recapitalization for an undisclosed amount with Eos Partners, a New York-based private equity firm that targets investments in leading middle market companies. The deal gives Eos majority control of the 90-person firm.

"This is going to enable us to grow organically and to go out and make an acquisition where that makes sense," said Mercury Co-Chief Executive Dan Danielson, "The direct response market is changing dynamically, television viewing is changing dynamically, so when we sit across the table from a client they want to be able to talk to us about Internet, about radio, about print."

Mercury Media grosses more than $200 million in media buying services annually, managing many of the best known direct response television campaigns currently running. Danielson and John Cabrinha, the firm's other co-CEO also have placed long-format advertising campaigns for consumer product lines such as Sony.

Danielson and Cabrinha formed their company in the mid-1980s. They not only helped build the infomercial industry by convincing TV stations to sell huge chunks of advertising time for the first time, they also amassed an extensive database of how certain markets and time slots perform for particular products.

"L.A. is a very conducive market for intomercials because it's economically strong and there's wide array of demographic and psychographic here." Danielson said. "Other markets are different. We handled media placement for Richard Simmons for five years. We learned that he worked really well up in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan--California did great--but we could not make that show work in Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas. You had to do a little bit more sharp-shooting there, figure out which markets and time periods to get it on."

AdStar Upgrades

Marina Del Rey-based AdStar, Inc. which provides the online classified advertising and other e-commerce transaction software for publications such the Los Angeles Times, last week launched the latest version of its Web-based Ad Sales, an interface designed to provide more flexibility and convenience for publishers and advertisers.

The new product will eventually enable advertisers to include rich audio and video to their ads once publishers upgrade other aspects of their systems to handle it, said Leslie Bernhard, AdStar's chief executive. In the meantime, the revised interface will enable advertisers to enter their data once, and then specify in which format and media they want it to run. It also will enable publishers to offer new ways for ads to run, making it easier for them to compete with new media competitors.

Traditionally, advertisers created and scheduled a single ad to run in both the print and online version of a newspaper. Web-based Ad Sales now can capture the data in a larger number of fields, which enables the advertiser to format and locate ads differently for print and online, and include photos, e-commerce-enabling options, preferential listings and Web identifiers.

"There now is media independence in the way we can collect the data," Bernhard said. "We're collecting the data independent of where it's going to be published, whether it's print, or online classifieds, over a mobile phone or via a search engine."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the largest newspaper so far to upgrade to the new version, said Bernhard, with no timeline yet set for the Times and other Tribune Co. publications. AdStar's ad transaction infrastructure runs classified ad sales for more than 40 newspapers, the CareerBuiider jobs site, and other online and print media companies.

Going Beyond

Santa Monica-based Beyond Media last week announced an alliance with an Atlanta-based Internet protocol television technology company that the partners say will enable independent content producers to finally offer high-quality video to viewers with less-than-stellar Internet connections.

They plan to market the technology, known as BeyondCast, to independent content producers who want get their content out to a large audience without dealing with traditional distribution companies. They also have been talking with sports leagues and corporations about live streaming of sports, entertainment and corporate events.

Beyond Media and its partner, DAVE.TV, demonstrated the new technology last week at a reception that featured a showing of Adrian Grenier's critically acclaimed new short film "Euthanasia."

With only a 1MBps bandwidth requirement, the technology can deliver IPTV to more than 80 percent of current U.S. broadband customers without the need to install upgraded fiber or other wiring, said John Kupice, Beyond Media's chief executive. And the BeyondCast live-streaming technology will enable digital TV-quality video over standard DSL lines and high-definition TV-quality video over cable and other high-speed broadband connections.

DAVE.TV has opened an office in the same building as Beyond, Kupice said, and plans to move to Santa Monica by the end of the year. "If you want to be a serious media presence to the customers we want to reach, you have to be in Los Angeles," he said.

Staff reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached at [phone], ext. 232, or at [e-mail].