Two Years Before a Cable TV Flop
Posted on July 19, 2011
Last week the Canoe Ventures CEO announced he would depart in August after completing a three year employment agreement. However, as a business concern, Canoe “barely left the dock”.
Canoe Ventures was organized and funded with $150 million three years ago by a consortium of six cable operators. Its mission was to develop interactive TV advertising for the CATV industry. To date it has launched only a single product meeting with little success.
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Inside Digital Media subscribers may recall our two year old post entitled “Why Project Canoe Will Fail”.
Among other points we explained, “…video advertising will evolve more quickly on the Internet than within closed networks of CATV systems. Technical standards on the Net are open and well understood by independent developers. Thus it is likely more of them will focus on Internet advertising innovations than on those governed by Project Canoe where standards have yet to be defined.”
As we explained in a March post, the faster innovative pace became evident when Shazam demonstrated how to use embedded signaling and Internet access to provide interactivity to conventional televisions via smartphones. Three months later Kleiner-Perkins apparently reached the same conclusion and invested $32 million to launch Shazam into the interactive TV advertising business.
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Three Months Before Kleiner Perkins
Posted on June 24, 2011
Earlier this week esteemed venture investors Kleiner-Perkins and Institutional Ventures participated in a $32 million financing for Shazam to fund development of a form of interactive television advertising based upon the company’s music recognition technology. Our March 4, 2011 Interactive TV Commercials Arrive detailed how Shazam pioneered the idea in an TV commercial with Old Navy.
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Specifically, Old Navy created this short music video to run as a TV commercial. Smartphone users activating Shazam while the track is playing, not only identify the song, but also get directed to pages at the Old Navy website where they can inspect merchandise. Hypothetically, they could also be provided with a time-sensitive discount coupon enabling them to impulsively buy clothing online without leaving their homes. The process works with conventional televisions whether broadcast, cable, or satellite.
Moreover, in a later post we explained that similar techniques utilizing digital watermarks could enable viewers to purchase merchandise representing “product placements” that are integral parts of the storyline in scripted TV shows. The method likewise works with conventional TV-sets and app-enabled smartphones or tablet computers.
Finally, we concluded that a variety of content identification technologies will ultimately result in a future in which All Media Shall Become Interactive, whether it be print, audio, or video.
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Will the iPhone SDK Live Up to Expectations?
Posted on March 30, 2008
Summary: If you are curious to know whether the new Software Developers Kit for the Apple iPhone is a genuinely significant industry development, this interview is for you.
Subject: Our guest today is Steve Lang who operates the MadMaxMedia.com blog. Steve believes that the new SDK is a truly important and will live up to the general media hype. He feels that in the future there will be a multitude of 3rd party applications that will make the iPhone a portable “teleputer” upon which voice conversations shall be merely one of a great many applications. Read more…
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