• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, March 19, 2010

Charter Communications, the fourth-largest cable operator, is gearing up for wide deployment of EBIF technology to enable interactive advertising. The company has a deal involving FourthWall Media, a Texas-based advanced-advertising firm, to provide the tech backbone for the iTV opportunities.

Once deployed, Charter could pitch advertisers on lead-generation opportunities, where a viewer can use a remote control to request a special coupon or sample of an advertised product.

Over time, Charter could make its EBIF-enabled homes available to Canoe Ventures, a business looking to use them to stream national iTV ads. Charter is one of six cable operators with a stake in Canoe, which is planning an iTV offering in the second quarter.

Charter is looking to have 1.6 million homes with set-top boxes teed up with EBIF (Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format) by the end of this year, Multichannel News reported. That's about half of its subscribers with digital cable.

Other cable operators and Canoe part-owners, notably Comcast, are well ahead of Charter in EBIF rollouts. EBIF also propels interactive programming options, and offerings such as caller-ID on the screen.

The arrangement with FourthWall Media also involves Concurrent, which will provide Charter with data culled from the set-top boxes, including on DVR-enabled ad-skipping and video-on-demand consumption.