Targeted TV Ads: This Time... It's Personal

By Mike Schuster May 28, 2009 2:35 pm

And now, a word from your very own sponsor.

Comment

Steven Spielberg's 2002 adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Minority Report is often cited as a vision of what the future might entail: Jet packs, holographic home movies, and an ad on every surface. While it might have seemed like so much fanciful eye candy, that vision of aggressively targeted -- and ubiquitous -- advertising had marketing heads planning for a very lucrative future.

Canoe Ventures -- a consortium of the country's largest cable TV companies -- has brought the industry a step closer to that reality.

Backed by Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner (TWC), Cablevision (CVC), Charter Communications, Cox Communication, and Brighthouse Networks, Canoe will soon launch its community-addressable messaging - which is just a fancy way of saying "ad-targeting service." With this system, advertisers can zero in on specific cable viewers based on their age, location, income, and so on. For example, a car maker could run a spot for a luxury vehicle in a gated community at the same time that an ad for an economy class sedan runs in a working-class neighborhood.

Advertisers are leaping at the opportunity, and funding for the service has reportedly reached hundreds of millions of dollars. Comcast fronted $70 million before the product was even finalized, despite competition from such formidable competitors as Google TV (GOOG) and TiVo (TIVO), which have their own targeted-ad programs in the works.

Possible uses for Canoe's service aren't just limited to the advertising game. Its interactivity could be used for things like game-show participation, instant voting on reality shows, or real-time rating of music videos.

But before any such features are rolled out, Canoe still has to fail-safe its compatibility with different cable-box brands. A mid-May launch was announced earlier this year, but bugs in the system have prevented the release.

Dana Runnels -- a spokesperson for Canoe -- told the Wall Street Journal that "technical trials" are not yet finished. (Those trial runs are tentatively dated for this summer.)

While bottom-liners are eager to rush the product to market, privacy concerns have raised some eyebrows. Charter Communications already faced Congressional hearings after it introduced an Internet tracker that analyzed both user data and habits. Along with angering civil-rights advocates, the tracker possibly helped earn Charter the title of worst Internet service provider, according to PCWorld.

Maybe the other cable companies shouldn't be so eager to get in on the act.Twitter: @mcs212