Advertising

Microsoft and advertising/communications giant, Publicis Groupe, last week announced a broad agreement to cooperate closely on three advertising-related "core objectives" that they say have been "enabled by the emergence of the digital media world." The "core objectives" center on content, performance and audience respectively.

Canoe Ventures--the company that is tasked with implementing Project Canoe, the US cable industry's initiative to create a national unified platform for interactive and addressable advertising (it is backed by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House)--will later this summer publish a "template" to support an EBIF-based interactive TV advertising campaign that is slated to begin in the fourth quarter, Canoe Ventures CTO, Arthur Orduna, announced at Light Reading's Cable Next-Gen Video Strategies conference last week, according to a report by Jeff Baumgartner, editor of Light Reading's Cable Digital News.

Plano, Texas-based interactive TV software provider, BIAP (note: last year, the company--whose name is an acronym for Broadband Interactive Applications--secured a five-year license agreement for its ETV User Agent with Time Warner Cable--see [itvt] Issue 8.23 Part 2B), announced Wednesday that OneLink Communications, a cable operator serving the metropolitan area of San Juan, Puerto Rico, will launch the BIAP Ad Widgets Advertising System on its net

Interactive TV and advanced advertising technology provider, OpenTV, and network video processing specialist, RGB Networks, announced Monday that they have developed a demonstration that shows how cable operators can use a combination of the companies' standards-based advertising-related products to generate new revenues from their video-on-demand and linear programming.

Canoe Ventures--the company that is tasked with implementing Project Canoe, the US cable industry's initiative to create a national unified platform for interactive and addressable advertising (it is backed by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House)--has suspended its plans to launch what was to be its first product, the Community Addressable Messaging (CAM) system, according to a report Thursday by Todd Spangler in the US cable-industry trade publication, Multichannel News.

NBC Universal and Microsoft announced an "alliance," Thursday, that will see NBC Universal using Microsoft's Admira television media marketplace to plan and sell national and local broadcast and cable advertising inventory. Microsoft acquired Admira through its purchase, almost exactly a year ago, of interactive TV and advanced advertising technology provider, Navic, which still retains a separate corporate identity within the Microsoft organization.

Boston-based interactive TV advertising specialist, Backchannelmedia, said Monday that its flagship Clickable TV technology has been validated by over-the-air testing and is now in what the company calls "a new commercialization stage." The company also announced that its founder and co-CEO, Michael Kokernak, has resigned his co-CEO position and will now become president of a new unit, called BCM Research, that will "seek to develop the next cycle of major innovation for Backchannelmedia" and that will "be closely networked to ongoing innovations in the digital technology space and will have a long-term horizon" (note: Kokernak will continue to sit on the company's board of directors).

GroupM-backed advanced advertising technology provider, Invidi Technologies, said Wednesday that satellite-TV provider, DirecTV, will use its software to offer advertisers "relevant" local advertising (note: last November, Invidi announced a similar deal with rival satellite-TV provider, DISH Network). According to Invidi, its Advatar software, in combination with DirecTV's DVR-equipped set-top boxes, will allow local television advertising availability based on geographic location, and will position TV ads according to any marketer's specifications.

In a posting on YouTube's corporate blog, Monday, product manager, Phil Farhi, announced that the company has begun a "small test" that will give users of its service more control over how they watch advertising.

New York-area MSO, Cablevision, said Wednesday that it will begin offering same-day video-on-demand ad insertion across its entire service area later this summer, allowing advertisers to initiate a campaign or swap out existing commercials within a 24-hour period of notification. The company--which also announced that it will provide telescoping (i.e. the ability to click from a commercial to additional advertiser information) across its entire service area later this summer--claims that its new ad insertion offering represents the largest deployment of VOD advertising in a single market.

US cable-industry research, development and standardization body, CableLabs, said Tuesday that 14 companies participated in an Addressable Advertising Interfaces interoperability event held at its Louisville, Colorado laboratories, during the week of June 1st.

Online retailer, Amazon.com, has launched a competition, dubbed "Your Amazon Ad Contest," that invites its customers to create a 30-second TV commercial for it.

Comcast Media Center (CMC) announced Tuesday that its national video-on-demand platform--which it says every day delivers more than 9,000 VOD assets from over 275 content providers to over 90% of the US's top cable MSO's and over 30-million VOD households--is now offering a "C3 VOD" service for delivering TV programming that can be counted in time-shifted mode, using The Nielsen Company's C3 commercial ratings. C3 ratings are billed as measuring average commercial minutes in programs that were viewed live and timeshifted through VOD or DVR playback in the three days following a linear broadcast. CMC also said that three TV networks, including AMC, are planning to use the new service.

Online video advertising network operator, Tremor Media, last week unveiled a suite of interactive, in-stream ad formats that it bills as enabling "non-linear viewing experiences inside the player." Dubbed vChoice, the formats "allow advertisers to go beyond traditional pre-roll," the company says, by presenting the viewer with options to watch additional video content, such as multiple additional ads, product reviews, tutorials or long-form branded content. The formats are also billed as supporting interactive games and non-linear storytelling.

Video-on-demand distribution services provider, TVN (note: the company recently announced that it would merge with Avail Media--see article posted on itvt.com, May 19th), and This Technology, a provider of dynamic metadata and advertising supply management software for digital TV, will today announce an integrated solution that they say will provide advanced advertising content and advertising supply management for delivered VOD assets.