• by Wayne Friedman , February 19, 2020

The growth of TV networks’ advertising impressions on local cable video-on-demand services continues its slowdown, partly due to near-sellout conditions, according to Canoe Ventures.

The video-on-demand (VOD) ad tech company  -- owned by three of the biggest cable TV operators -- said advertising impressions on video on-demand programming rose 4% in 2019 to 27.3 billion, much slower than in previous years. It was up 12% in 2018 to 26 million and 30% higher in 2017 to 23.3 million..

During the first six months of 2019, VOD advertising impressions were at 13.1 billion -- virtually the same level, 13 billion, as the first six months of 2018.

The reason for the slowdown, says Chris Pizzurro, vice president of global sales at Canoe, is that networks “are starting to hit their ceiling with available inventory on the platform and are selling out.”  

Canoe provides video-on-demand dynamic ad insertion (DAI) to over 100 national TV networks in more the 180 markets.

Canoe Ventures, owned Comcast, Charter Communications’ Spectrum, and Cox Communications -- now covers 38 million homes. During the past year, it added around 800,000 cable TV homes from Frontier Communications.

Last year, 79% of these cable operators’ VOD ad impressions came from set-top boxes, with 21% from other devices.

Canoe says it trafficked 10,071 campaigns in 2019 -- 86% coming from paid advertisers and 14% from TV network promos.