• by Mitch Oscar , Op-Ed Contributor, June 8, 2010

A couple of years ago, in the midst of Huntsville, Alabama's NASA denizens (approximately 15,000 abodes), the media community was informed that there had been a successful trial of addressable video commercial TV delivery to individual set-top boxes within the households. Open TV garnered credit for the innovation. The lead ad agency's media-propelled looping messaging was "substantial cost efficiency and diminished commercial tune-away." No one was able to breach their few-worded, guarded "proprietary" statement, which arose as a shield wall around the trial preventing inquisitors from penetrating its mysteries.

Note: since that launch OpenTV has gone missing, though we hear they are making strides in other continents with the integration of a variety of proprietary products.

The promise of addressable video technology trialing was then sighted flowing along the East Coast in the direction of the Northeast, in the guise of a Visible World product, to ultimately arrive in Brooklyn after attempting an unload in Long Island's Suffolk County. A near two-year journey to receive the blessings from the mandarins in Bethpage for a launch in a few hundred thousand households in Cablevision's footprint. Cablevision had determined, as had the British during the Revolutionary War, that a successful deployment in Brooklyn would erase any doubt in the minds of the community that the technology was here to stay. Personally, I had chased Chase, my financial client, there with a $500,000 commitment to Visible World - and that was just for the honor to participate in the addressable trial. The price did not include the cost of local commercial TV inventory pegged at another couple of hundred thousand.

Note: The Cablevision deployment and future expansive promise enabled Visible World to claim the mantle for most deployed video addressable TV technology in the U.S.; to date, looking to expand to 1 million in the Cablevision footprint in the near term and ultimately expand throughout the Cablevision 3 million universe. Also, there were rumblings that Visible World's next destination(s) was Comcast terrain; however, since little has been heard about the expedition after the announcement of Comcast's acquisition of NBCU, it might be a matter of time before Comcast digests its prey and can move onto other delectables.

As the back room technologists tweaked the addressability of the Visible World deliverable for Brooklyn, Comcast teased the media community with the promise of an Invidi addressable deployment in Baltimore. Liftoff seemed to take forever. When it arrived, many months ago, it purred along.

Note: The lead ad agency's media-propelled looping messaging was "substantial cost efficiency and diminished commercial tune-away" - though a couple of percentage points lower than the Huntsville's trial. No one was able to breach their few-worded, guarded "proprietary" statement, which arose as a shield wall around the trial preventing inquisitors from penetrating its mysteries.

Concurrently, since 2002 I Navic'd a few times in markets owned by Time Warner and Cox. In these trials the same video commercial was delivered to each household in the cablers' footprint and my clients were able to deliver a variety of banner overlays to different zip codes, and in some cases, households. In case studies shared with the media community (conferences and Collaborative Alliances), we have proven that ads addressed through the integration of privacy protected foundation data (subscription) and privacy protected subscriber segmentation garnered the most RFI interaction i.e., in one study, AIG customers, which represented 7% of the households in the trialed market, generated 61% of the click through responses.

Note: Many months ago Navic had been acquired by Microsoft and in days that followed Microsoft shifted the company's emphasis away from banner overlay addressability to the Admira ad auctioning set top box based buying system. Also, persistent gossip indicates that once Navic's management rejected the cable operator's offer to acquire the company in favor of Microsoft's much more generous compensation plan, Navic's addressable technology would be replaced by a Canoe Ventures supported alternative. EBIF, anyone.

In recent months there has been a slew of announcements regarding Invidi. Deals publically in place include deployment with satcasters DirecTV and Dish, as well as telco Verizon. Millions of set top boxes - 40 million national households according to published agreements. Last month, a Google investment. This month, cash from dataminer Experian's coffers. Hopefully, the comingling of infused cash, a demonstrative national footprint, technology (fuzzy mathematical addressability built into Motorola set top boxes) and privacy protected datamined segmented targeting will give the media community the necessary impetus to help realize the promise of addressable and interactive television through ubiquity of deployment and sharing of discovery that informs how marketers exploit these capabilities to engage its potential customers.

Note: the early bird may get the worm, however, it appears that the second mouse is eating the cheese.*

*Based upon a line from comedian Steve Wright