Cable's Canoe set to make waves

Canoe Ventures, the cable TV industry joint venture focused on developing enhanced advertising standards and business processes, plans to introduce addressable advertising and messaging capabilities during the first half of this year. But, things will really get interesting in the second half, as Canoe plans to use Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format (EBIF) to launch interactive capabilities that allow TV viewers one-click functionality to request more information about a product. EBIF capabilities can allow Canoe, the cable industry and its advertisers to measure the response to these ads, potentially creating greater ad value.

EBIF's benefit is that it is available today to support interactivity on current digital set-top boxes, in advance of the Tru2way technology that may dominate in the future. Canoe will supply several cable TV programmers and networks with an EBIF template. Comcast and Time Warner Cable earlier announced their own plans to use EBIF in their networks. Non-cable TV companies such as Verizon Communications and SureWest Communications also have used EBIF in TV services.

For more:
- Cable Digital News has this story

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