Joint CATV venture to begin targeted ad platform tests

Just shy of one year old, the "Project Canoe" joint venture between six of the biggest Multi-System Operators has announced that the earliest stages of its targeted ad system will begin testing within the next 60 to 90 days.

The joint venture's stated goal from the outset has been to create a targeted advertising platform for cable television. Participating in the venture are Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House.

Multichannel News reported from the CTAM Summit on Saturday that Canoe's CEO David Verklin spoke about both the "ridiculous level" of advertiser interest in the project, and the urgency of its advancement. An advertising refresh is important now because of the impending advertising slump that analysts believe will greatly impact TV ad sales.

Broadcast and traditional cable television is handicapped in that it's a one-way medium. That is to say, a signal is sent out and consumed, but once it's out, it's gone. Only with certain hardware can a viewer's consumptive habits be effectively metered, monitored, and studied.

The ability to track the behavior of Web users has caused evolutionary strides in targeted advertising that TV advertising still has yet to match in terms of efficacy and value. IPTV provides access to usage data, as does the "connected platform" such as TiVo, but wireline cable operators are still at a competitive disadvantage in advertising. Marlis Humphrey, director of Strategic Marketing of IPTV and Mobile TV at Harris Corp. told TVB Europe in June that, "Targeted advertising can be a differentiator for [IPTV and Cable], and the race is on."

Verklin announced the first steps toward completion of a targeted cable ad platform will begin in the next 60 to 90 days with creative versioning ad tests. Creative versioning refers to the modification of a national advertisement to be relevant to a local zone. Verklin said that within the next 12 months, a large-scale deployment of a service that allows viewers to obtain further information from advertisers directly through their ads will also be in place.

The participating MSOs will be collecting data from nearly 32 million viewers upon which to build these services and thereby boost the value of cable advertising.

Canoe's Chief Marketing Officer Vicki Lins said, "The idea is to bring the kind of ad-targeting and measurability found in the Web universe to cable television...We don't want it to be 'just like the Internet.' We want it to be better and different."