Telcos, Cablecos Could Follow Parallel Ad Tracks

While telco TV providers and their cable competition may be arch enemies in the marketplace, infrastructure providers are helping drive forward advanced advertising systems for both provider types based on specifications created by the cable industry.

It may have appeared that certain ad system vendors, such as Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and TANDBERG TV were first focused on Tier 1 telcos with their efforts. Upon further review, however, they’ve expanded their approach to include cable networks.

Just a few weeks ago, 15 vendors tested addressable advertising interface interoperability at a CableLabs Inc. event using a Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers specification called SCTE 130.

SCTE 130 is a standard for creating personalized or addressable advertising and, industry experts add, is suitable for any digital interactive system including those used by telcos.

Advertising Age

Addressable advertising could drive a huge shift in advertising strategies by enabling service providers to tightly target viewers with relevant ads as opposed to the still commonplace practice of mass-blast TV network broadcasting.

Last May, before an audience of cablecos and their suppliers at The National Cable Show, Chrysler Corp.’s CMO stressed the need for addressable ads. At the more recent Telco TV event in November, a focus on advertising emerged as a solid theme at a show often more focused on network technologies.

However, cablecos already are selling ads based on area codes, zip codes and more, while telco TV operators are relying almost entirely on monthly TV package subscriptions, in-home device rentals and movies bought from video-on-demand systems for their revenue. But more targeted advertising works well for telco TV providers given they lack the national footprints and often the subscriber densities to be taken seriously by advertisers and their agencies in a volume-over-value approach.

Given these realities, it’s hard to argue against suppliers supporting a single set of specs that spans cablecos and telcos.

“Vendors are happy to support a standard strategy for addressable advertising because it makes their own integration jobs easier, and it’s pretty likely that the industry overall would like to have a single solution,” explained Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. “The telcos are, in my view, happy to adopt the CableLabs’ approach to things when it makes sense, and that’s going to be pretty often because cable TV is still the leading strategy and also the most active in addressable advertising.”

Addressing Addressability

The cable industry calls its interactive TV approach tru2way.

“The tru2way model is going to open up opportunities for non-traditional cable middleware suppliers,” reasoned Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for IPTV and Next-Gen OSS/BSS at Infonetics Research Inc.. “In addition, it really would be far more efficient for the telcos and their vendors to jointly pursue this standard. Taking a look at the participating vendors, it’s really going to be impossible for the telcos not to adopt SCTE 130 in some fashion.”

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines