Aereo Launches Cable-Killer Ad Campaign, Expands Into Three New States

Aereo today announced that the cloud DVR/live TV streaming service will be expanding past New York City to more than 19 million people living in the surrounding NYC metropolitan area. The expansion will cover 29 new counties across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Before today, only residents in New York’s five boroughs had access to the service.

Alongside the announcement of expansion, Aereo has also said that its new advertising blitz will launch this week in New York. The multimillion-dollar ad campaign was first revealed earlier this month, after Aereo hired former Apple exec, Alex Moulle-Berteaux, as the company’s new CCO.

According to the NY Daily News, the multimillion-dollar ad campaign will show its face on billboards, phone kiosks, buses, ferries and commuter trains in and around the greater New York area. The company even nabbed a spot on Penn Station’s massive digital advertising wall.

Onlookers will be greeted with this tagline: “Live TV. Online. No Cable Required.”

It’s a relatively easy sell in NYC, where students, artists and young adults pay a ridiculous cost of living and often forfeit cable, instead opting to either steal video content or enjoy through Netflix and Hulu. After years of living this way myself, I can assure you that there are only so many years that you can miss out on the Super Bowl, Grammys and other live events before cable starts to seem tempting.

Aereo hopes to intercept consumers who are looking for something more than the standard content library, but don’t want to pay $100 for 10 channels that they’ll use and 240 channels that they will never click through.

As it stands now, Aereo offers about 30 streaming channels, including Bloomberg. The biggest gap in the service is its lack of ESPN, but CEO and founder Chet Kanojia has made it clear that content-licensing deals are a part of Aereo’s roadmap (just as they were when the company signed on Bloomberg).

Aereo also has plans to expand beyond NYC — into 22 new markets in fact — with the help of a $38 million Series B investment led by Diller’s IAC and Highland Capital. But first, the company is focused on understanding its core market in New York before bringing the ad blitz to other parts of the East Coast.