• by David Kaplan , April 5, 2005

The Casino and Gaming Television network has signed an agreement with emuse technologies, a producer of interactive television advertising content, to create interactive ads for CGTV advertisers.

Some of CGTV's content already uses interactivity, allowing viewers to actually play along with casino games being played in the program--and hopes that emuse can arrange a more evolved set of iTV functions, said CGTV's President and CEO, Nick Rhodes.

Rhodes added that emuse and the network will start developing multi-middleware single-screen interactive advertisements using the tech company's Modelstream software, and coordinate testing the applications with their advertisers. Emuse and CGTV plan to demonstrate their first prototype in San Francisco at this week's National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference. This initial demonstration will feature an interactive tour of the Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, California.

And aside from being interactive, the ad has another important feature, Rhodes said.

"The long-form interactive ad restricts [Digital Video Recorders] from fast-forwarding through the commercial, and it allows users to instantly book reservations at the resort via their remote control," Rhodes said.