• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, August 6, 2009

Canoe Ventures could pave the way for interactive advertising campaigns in some 25 million homes by the end of the year while producing a notable revenue stream for cable operators in 2010, according to Comcast COO Steve Burke.

Canoe engineers are developing a system that would allow cable networks to overlay interactive ads on programming delivered to a subset of the homes served by multiple large cable operators.

Advertisers could sponsor opportunities for viewers to vote or participate in polls on certain topics. Or, more promisingly, viewers could use their remote controls to request more information about a product or to receive a coupon -- a lead-generation engine for a marketer.

"I think you will see some revenue in 2010 and it will become more material in the future," Burke said in reference to Canoe's potential contributions to Comcast.

Canoe, a joint venture of the six largest cable operators including Comcast and Time Warner Cable, is looking to use access to their set-top boxes to transform national cable advertising. Interactive advertising has been tried in various forms on local levels, but Canoe is promising advertisers a coast-to-coast platform.

On a conference call Thursday, Comcast's Burke said he attended a recent Canoe board meeting and came away believing the interactive advertising efforts -- and other Canoe projects -- are "going quite well." He did not specify the other initiatives; Canoe put a plan to launch a national addressable advertising platform on hold in June.

Burke said "depending on how the rollout goes," up to 25 million homes could be ready for interactive advertising by the fourth quarter of this year. Building the infrastructure is tricky, however, since standards need to be established and implemented for all six cable systems.

Even with the troubled economy, the six operators have invested heavily in Canoe, believing advertisers will pay premiums for new-fangled opportunities that in turn will add fuel to their bottom lines.

"Obviously, this is a really important initiative for (Comcast)," Burke said. "We have got to get interactive advertising moving."

Many cable system executives feel the industry has never fully capitalized on opportunities to turn advertising into a significant revenue stream, particularly with the millions of set-top boxes Canoe is planning to use as its propeller.

Comcast said Thursday that in the April-June quarter, its local ad sales fell 20%. Still, revenues at its cable segment were up 4.6% to $8.5 billion.

Yet even if Canoe builds the infrastructure allowing an advertiser to run an interactive campaign on an ESPN or MTV in 25 million homes, there is at least one more major hurdle: the networks themselves. Programmers would have to reach deals with Canoe to somehow license the technology. And Canoe had little luck getting them to buy in its addressable-advertising platform that has been put on hold.

Burke's suggestion that 25 million homes could be teed up this year was more ambitious than what Canoe CEO David Verklin had suggested in June. Verklin said some 10 million homes would be ready by the end of 2009, or perhaps not until early 2010.