Canoe Ventures announces programming partners for iTV solutions

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Canoe Ventures announced Comcast Networks, Discovery Communications, NBC Universal and Rainbow Media as its initial partners who have separately agreed to launch Canoe’s national interactive television (ITV) solutions across their individual programming networks. Once integrated with Canoe’s national platform for advanced television, these network partners can offer the company’s suite of standards-based ITV marketing solutions beginning with a “Request-for-Information” (RFI) application that enhances the value of thirty-second ads through viewer interactivity. Canoe’s first ITV application, RFI, is scheduled to begin deploying later this quarter.


Spearheaded by Canoe Ventures, the cable industry recently announced the launch of “SelecTV,” a consumer-facing brand that will appear on-screen to indicate the availability of interactive television content. For viewers, SelecTV signifies an interactive experience that provides them more opportunity to engage with their favorite content. SelecTV is a key first step to establishing a common identity for alerting consumers of the presence of ITV.

These programmers represent the first network partners for Canoe Ventures, which was created in 2008 by the country’s leading cable operators to enhance national networks’ broadcast television advertising and content through advanced technologies such as interactivity. Since then, Canoe has built a national interactive television platform which allows it to launch and manage ITV campaigns on behalf of programming networks across all its partner cable operators.

“Canoe’s mission is to turn television into the next great interconnected digital platform,” said David Verklin, CEO of Canoe Ventures. “We hope to be a part of enhancing the television experience starting with the launch of truly national interactive TV, something we as an industry have been talking about for many years. We are so proud to be associated with these visionary programming network partners who share our passion to make TV even better.”

Canoe provides a comprehensive activation process for network partners to integrate enabling ITV technologies and align the necessary broadcast and operations functions for national ITV campaigns. The company also offers sales support, application testing, and sales and order management integration.