Canoe Begins Trial of RFI Interactive TV Advertising, Pushes Back Commercial Launch until Spring

Canoe Ventures, the company tasked with implementing the US cable industry's plans for interactive and addressable advertising (note: its backers are Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House), plans to commercially launch an EBIF-based Request for Information (RFI) interactive TV advertising product in the spring, and began a trial of RFI interactive TV advertising with a network partner in the fourth quarter of 2009, the company's senior director of marketing communications, Dana Runnells, told Multichannel News's Todd Spangler last week. Runnells--who added that the initial commercial launch will be followed by a "national deployment throughout the rest of the year as EBIF is deployed across the country"--declined to name the network or provide any details about the test, Spangler reported. Canoe, which last summer postponed plans to launch a targeted advertising service, had previously stated that it hoped to launch its RFI product before the end of 2009.

In related news: Over the holiday season, Cablevision used its recently launched Optimum Select interactive TV advertising platform to allow viewers to bookmark a two-minute trailer for the Paramount Pictures movie, "Up in the Air," for later viewing on its VOD platform: viewers bookmarked the trailer by pressing "select" during a commercial for the movie. The MSO announced the new bookmarking feature--which made the trailer available in the Optimum Select section of its VOD guide--in an email to its subscribers just before Christmas.