Web's Interactivity a Threat, Model for Cable TV - InternetNews.com - 0 views
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Karl Wabst on 21 Apr 09WASHINGTON -- For more than a year, the nation's largest cable companies have been staking their hopes to thrive in a data-driven, interactive advertising market on Canoe Ventures. Born Project Canoe, the venture aims to cull the vast troves of data that cable companies have about their customers, from subscriber demographics to the clicks of a remote control, to bring Web-like ad targeting to the television platform. Here at the Cable Show, the annual conference hosted by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Canoe CEO David Verklin proclaimed that his firm is ready for prime time, with its first product set to roll out in the next six weeks. "We're going to turn television into a platform," Verklin said in a panel discussion with several cable executives. Canoe's forthcoming product, called community addressable messaging, will enable an advertiser running a national TV campaign to customize it with local insertions to reach targeted demographics defined by data supplied from the cable providers. Verklin hailed it as the first application of local insertion technology to a national campaign.