On Demand Summit: Can 'Free' VOD Pay the Freight?

New York -- Cable operators finally have the technical
capacity to switch out ads in video-on-demand streams on the fly, so now the
industry must focus on how to make money out of these platforms as they reach a
broader and more diverse audience.

Canoe Ventures, the joint venture of Comcast, Time Warner
Cable, Cox Communications, Cablevision Systems, Bright House and Charter
Communications, has dynamic ad insertion (DAI) supported in about 28 million
U.S. homes, said Canoe head of sales and marketing Chris Pizzurro during an
advertising panel here at the On Demand Summit. "We think that's a tremendous
start," he said.  

Canoe, which was sized down last year to focus
exclusively on VoD advertising
, hooks into MSO advertising systems as well
as the campaign managers used by programmers that take advantage of the
platform.  Most of its current base is courtesy of deployments with
Comcast and TWC.

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