• by Mitch Oscar , Op-Ed Contributor, June 29, 2010

Since the Canoe Ventures fanfare-less fall launch of its RFI application with TruTV in 3 million households, there have been many reported sightings of Canoe-ian activities in the press: cable operator EBIF fealty; Comcast-NBCU, Discovery and Rainbow pledges of fraternity; amplification of the new digs to accommodate the growing hordes of crew men and women; the formation of an advisory board of esteemed marketing notables, impromptu dais appearances at industry events by Canoe mandarins (bowmen and strokemen), the hiring of a press secretary (Michael Burgi, former MediaWeek editor) as well as the quarterly presentation of the Collaborative Alliances' Canoe Paddle Report (CPR).

This past month, as marketers and their agencies tried to negotiate the shoals, rapids and terrors of the upfront marketplace, cable network AMC, a Cablevision/Rainbow property, quietly floated an extension to its traditional linear network package: the ability to utilize the Canoe Ventures RFI application (7 million households) plus the Cablevision footprint (3 million households) to bring interactivity to 10 million households -- in the form of a clickable overlay on an advertiser's video commercial that enables viewers to utilize their interactive, channel changing remote control to receive a brochure, a free gift, a coupon.

Fish nor Fowl

What struck me curious about this AMC package was twofold: the mixing of the Canoe national model of sell-through with a local cable operator's footprint and concerns about the ad agency's ability to evaluate this combined local and national package coupled with related funding issues.

My understanding of the Canoe's aquatic endeavors was initially to develop a common standard for the delivery of interactive and addressable applications across all cable operator waterways - perhaps to extend to satcasters and telcos in the distant future - and then to sell its applications to national cable networks, who, in turn, would sell the promise of interactivity and addressability to national advertisers. A praiseworthy goal: to build a common navigational methodology for better engagement with TV viewers across the States. Daniel Howe's "What Hath God Wrought (The Transformation of America, 1815 - 1848)" devotes many early pages of the tome to the importance of the uniform canal systems in the U.S. to develop commerce during that period of American history. However, instead of following that specific aqua route, the first offering after Canoe's aborted Community Addressable Messaging (CAM) application is an admixture of "national" and local (Cablevision) distribution.

The AMC upfront interactive proposition marries the ability of AMC national advertisers to utilize the Canoe RFI overlay over commercials purchased in the upfront in 7 million  homes across various cable operator systems (the proposal is not clear where the distribution will occur) with the opportunity to acquire local commercial inventory from Cablevision's footprint that includes other cable network local inventory that will offer an RFI application - though it is my understanding that the technology is different than the EBIF standard. Murky waters. Since this approach at face value seems to be a patchwork of distribution platforms (national and local, Canoe distribution and Cablevision footprint) why limit the proposal to only Cablevision's footprint. Time Warner, Cox, Charter, BrightHouse also offer RFI applications and have been successfully implementing campaigns since 2002. How bout the satcasters with reach of interactive variations of upwards of 33 million households. Why not ring up a telco and see what they are willing to offer.  Since scale and ease of entry have always been stumbling blocks for the adoption of interactivity by the media community (buyers, sellers, distributors, content owners) why not expand to include the other players.

Fish or Fowl Conundrum

Who should represent the inventory in the AMC package that is interactivable. Certainly AMC is best equipped to negotiate the fate of its own national inventory with enhancements. And as demonstrated by their recent foray in the ad community they are knocking on the doors of their national TV buyers. But what about the Cablevision portion of the proposal. National buyers are not equipped with the wherewithal to evaluate a local proposal. Bring in the local buyers - many of which have already experienced or at least reviewed, the benefits of local TV enhancements. How will the national and local buyers vivisect the value of the proposition. If an advertiser was interested in the Cablevision footprint wouldn't they already have done business with the cabler. Does an advertiser really need the excuse of a national submission from a cable network, such as AMC, to participate in a local cable buy. For argument's sake, if the national and local buyer with the assistance of the media planner can agree on the value of the interactive proposal where will the funds be allocated from: national, local or a testing scenario fund.

Industry pundits have readily agreed that one of the impediments to the advertising community's financial support of ITV and addressable applications has been the difficulty for vendors to navigate the ad agency infrastructure to sell in their value propositions. Whose door should they knock on to get a fair and meaningful directional read. Is it the local TV buyer, the media planner, the digital group, or the designated agency champion for innovations, like a Jen Soch, Michael Bologna, Tracey Scheppach or all of the aforementioned.  Rarely is a national TV buyer in the mix. The Canoe model is built upon a national cable network salesman, who rarely has been involved in ITV/addressability, selling the applications to a national TV buyer, who equally has rarely been involved in ITV/addressability concepts. Some say a daunting challenge compounded by the notion that the national buyers, who spend millions of dollars on linear TV commercial packages, will be willing to pay incremental fees for interactivity rather than simply baptizing the applications as "added value" that should be subsumed into the national Upfront package cost at no additional charge.

Epilogue

Hopefully, now that Canoe has morphed its model beyond the purity of just a deployment for national cable networks it will seek more partnerships with its parents and their content siblings to offer greater reach and easier point of entry. Let Canoe marry the legacy technologies of many of the platform operators for the interim until it can deploy uniform standards across the waterways. Perhaps Canoe Ventures and its partners - cable systems and cable networks owned or associated with the operators plus other pay TV platforms - could employ the expertise of NCC Media, which is also owned by the cable operators - for consistency of paddling to navigate the shoals of frustration and complications of the interactive and addressable sell-through. As I have written in my Fellowship of the Digital Ring editorials, NCC Media has successfully weaved sales relationships between the cable operators, satcasters and telcos. Hopefully, they will be able to apply some of that business acumen to iTV and addressable applications as TV interactivity and addressability stretch from sea to shining sea.