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October 25, 2011
Canoe CEO Says Momentum is Gaining
By Amy Maclean
As Canoe Venture’s new CEO, Kathy Timko has clear mandates set forward for the next 12-18 months, with scaling the iTV platform front and center. “That means more households and more networks. With that, you overlay a product line. We’re going to expand the iTV portfolio and we’re going to launch VOD Dynamic Ad Insertion,” Timko told CableFAX.
Canoe’s seeing some progression of that national scale on the iTV portfolio with its iTV product in the marketplace for about 9 months now. First, Canoe enabled Style to have interactive ads that were available to about 4mln homes, then 10mln and now close to 23mln. Other nets, including E! and AMC, have signed on and are growing their iTV household reach in a measured way.
“Part of the Canoe mandate is that we don’t want to change anything with the consumer experience except the interactivity that we can provide,” Timko said. “So, when we turn on the footprint for any one of these networks, we do it in a very methodical way. Market by market. MSO by MSO. If we’re going to bring on Discovery and Bravo and USA… we do those in parallel, but you do it very methodically. So, they start out at a lower level footprint, and they will grow and eventually catch up to the high watermark [of original nets offering the iTV product].”
All told, Timko said among its enabled networks, Canoe’s in about 115 DMAs—21 of the top 25. “That’s about 51% of all digital cable households, which is a pretty good number,” she said. “We have gained traction with national advertisers across all the categories—automotive, consumer package goods, pharmaceutical, financial services, entertainment, travel… They don’t all need the same thing, so we have to have a product suite that can expand and meet their needs. So, now that we start to get a reach that’s compelling, you can start to see a momentum in the marketplace.”
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CABLEFAX MAGAZINE
