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 +++

Comcast and NBC – interactive advertising goes mainstream!

The recent announcement by Comcast of its acquisition of NBC bodes well for the launch of real interactive advertising.  Comcast has already committed to interactivity with its Canoe Project investment and the roll out of interactive services in Chicago and other regions.  The combined viewing power of Comcast and NBC (with its Hulu online video service) now offers a serious stage to develop interactive and revenues sharing advertising and marketing applications.  Major brands such as P&G are already experimenting with new interactive formats and local advertising solutions.  As an early proponent of interactive advertising, I for one am excited that at last a player of this magnitude is taking the next step.  Park Associates forecasts that advanced TV advertising (including VOD, DVR and addressable commercials) could exceed $4 billion within five years.  That’s a big chu;nk of cable satellite and telco tv revenues.

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