Cee Mee – Cee Who – Cee What

I got into interactive TV in the late 1990′s.  I was so happy Canoe Ventures took up the challenge of interactive advertising  (though they now seem to be dropping interactive TV) and conducted some research but I just read the report that was posted – very light.  We are talking about 4,000 televisionaries and results around their tests and experiences.  The market for this in USA alone is 115 million -  4,000 does not seem a big enough sample.  Why aren’t more brands and agencies getting into this?  Canoe Ventures got some $150 million to make some headway into the new media world for the cable industry.  I sincerely hope there is a more detailed report somewhere.  Love the concept but feel we are missing the Internet, mobile, ipad and tablets and user interaction with TV +++

Canoe starting to paddle?

Canoe Ventures CEO, David Verklin, revealed at the National Association of Television Programming Executives (NATPE), that seven networks will allow advertisers to run interactive TV ads in over 20 million cable households in about 90 days, according to a report by MediaPost’s David Goetzl. Comcast-owned E! and Style and Cablevision-owned AMC are already selling a Canoe-developed platform enabling RFI spots, while Bravo, Discovery, History and USA will offer the platform by early summer, Verklin said. Verklin also stated that Canoe plans to add DirecTV and DISH Network households to its footprint of ITV advertising-enabled households; and he said that Canoe expects to roll out an ITV polling app by the end of summer that will offer sponsorship opportunities.

What was the real outcome of the cable interactive solutions event?

The recent Cablelabs and Canoe Ventures initiative on advanced advertising seems to have been a real hit with brands according to several blogs.  Twenty four companies participated (not clear if they were selected guests or an industry invitation was sent – also not clear who paid for what which usually shows if the event was meaningful).  Key interactive vendors (mostly long time cable suppliers) also demonstrated solutions.

The event lasted a week and Id love to see the agenda and what was actually gleaned from the event.  I believe these insights are what Canoe needs to be learning and sharing with their investors and advertisers.  Any clues from Cablelabs or Canoe greatly appreciated but the summary that vendors were enthusiastic about a common platform was a bit lame – well yes – one platform, one format, easy implementation – but I had over ten companies working with me on interactive applications in 2001 and the interactive world of cable got bogged down with cable supplier battles and ad agency myopia.  Will it be different this time?  Yes, yes, yes – roll on interactive cable apps!

Interactive Ads are coming….

Recent announcements by MySpace and and Socialmedia.com on collaboration to make ads more personalized to the user as well as the Tremor Media  in-stream interactive ad formats announcement seem to be showing progress from basic re-purposing of old ad formats into something new and meaningful for the Internet age.  Heavy hitters like Procter & Gamble, Universal Pictures and Microsoft evidently all participated in the beta test of the new formats.  The new formats showed triple digit increases in video completion rates, time spent and click-through rates.  This all sounds very exciting but Real Time Content already has a system that can perform these sorts of functions on the fly and be more highly personalized.  My experience with templates and ad formats was that they were only good at to start with and then (like windows) you wanted to break out of the formats and do more exciting creative.  Comments welcomed

Coca Cola launches new web series around pop performer

Sprite, one of Coca Cola’s leading brands gets the new media age and I applaud the new web series following Katie Vogel as she attempts to grab stardom. The web series will attract the right audience for Sprite and subtle branding will gain more brand loyalty and recognition as well as offering timely opportunities for promotions that can be tracked and managed.With new web series, Sprite plays pop impresario

Alcatel-Lucent launch interactive media manager – is today the day for Interactive TV?

The Cable Show had some interesting announcements – Alacatel-Lucent launching a standards based platform should mean that advertisers and their agencies now have an easier time with applications for enhanced TV.  Voting on mobile has proved so popular, surely now is the time to make truly interactive TV and advertising work.  Having been a pioneer in this industry in the early 2000′s I am really hoping the day has come.  We invented a demo with Mondex (once part of Mastercard) and a great concept in smart money- think its now defunct.  I will put the reel up on the website next week – maybe Mastercard will have a look and understand that it is now time for My TV with all its personalization, interaction and TRANSACTION – did I mention transaction – capabilities!

Alacatel Lucent’s Interactive Media Manager now supporting EBIF and tru2wayl

Media Giants bring in new Digital Leaders

Both Hearst and News Corp have recently hired new heads of digital.  Jon Miller will be the new Chief Digital Officer at News Corp – formerly an AOL executive and more recently with Velocity Interactive Group.  Miller will need to guide Hulu and Myspace through to profits and to a winning advertising business model.  We wish him well.

George Kliavkoff, a former NBC Universal leader who helped launch Hulu and a guy Ive got a lot of time for (heard him speak on a couple of occasions and he is firmly planted in today but keeps his visionary glasses on and is not afraid to fail – as long he does it fast – I seem to remember him saying at one conference) joins Hearst to manage the company’s ownership in cable companies and to look for new investment and alliances presumably to bring the media giant into the new media world with a leading strategy for new businesses and applications to generate more revenues from current businesses and content.

Great to see traditional media looking to drive new media but having been part of one of Honeywell’s drive to ram marketing down the throat of an engineering oriented company, I continue to doubt that these appointments can be truly effective – its like saying we know the bus driver can no longer handle driving the bus so we have brought on this new guy who will try to drive the bus without access to the steering wheel…. hope Im wrong but if I was heading up these giants I would be doing it differently.  We wish them both well and continue to be on stand-by should either feel our advice and experience may be of use.

TV.com v Hulu and the effective use of Web 2.0 tools

As Troy Dreier discusses in his article for Streaming Media this week, TV.com has really embraced web 2.0 tools and is looking for a total engagement of the audience. See the full article at http://www.streamingmedia.com/r/printerfriendly.asp?id=11078 Im looking for players in the Web 2.0 space who believe they have an application that can take this audience and community build to a new stage. I will be at the show 1 and 2 April – see my linkedin account and email me to meet up.