Expect Canoe to paddle hard with dynamic video-on-demand ad insertion in 2012.
So said Canoe Ventures CEO Kathy Timko, during an interview at Multichannel News/B&C's OnScreen Media Summit here Thursday afternoon.
Timko said the cable industry's advanced national advertising platform has been testing dynamic VOD ad insertion with one operator in 2011, and will commercialize the service in 2012. Moreover, Canoe will first test and then commercialize the platform with other MSOs throughout the course of next year. Initially, the platform does not include targeting capabilities.
She said the platform marries the campaign management elements from the networks, with the ad insertion functionality of the operators. She said there has been interest from both operators and network partners in the new inventory opportunities, which will be expressed in a less cluttered environment. MCN technology editor Todd Spangler conducted the interview.
Monitoring initial results aside, Timko said much work will occur with dynamic ad-insertion VOD over the next couple of years, relative to establishing terms between the content providers and the MSOs. Canoe, in turn, will facilitate those relationships and map the ads from the networks to the operators.
Formed in 2008 by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems and Bright House Networks, Canoe, which trades on Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) interactive TV applications, currently counts eight network partners.
The original three networks, AMC, Style and E! Entertainment, can now reach 25 million homes interactively, with a presence in eight of the top 10 DMAs.
Bravo, Discovery Channel, History and USA Network were next to come ashore and are now available to the "high teen" millions of households, according to Timko.
G4 was a recent roster addition and is accessible by 3.5 million households in a couple of markets, where trivia and polling apps were put into play. Timko said those mechanisms will be affixed to all eight networks in 2012.
Looking further down the road, Timko said Canoe would branch out from its cable roots and bring its interactive overlays to satellite and telco distributors.
