Canoe sunk
July 9, 2009
Canoe Ventures has cancelled plans to introduce its Community Addressable Messaging (CAM 1.0) product, citing a range of technical difficulties with the offering. The service, which was set to launch this summer, would have allowed advertisers to run one spot in 370 pre-selected, high income cable “zones” and another in the rest of the country.
Canoe, a joint venture of the U.S.’s six largest cable operators said the decision came down to the fact that there were too many technical and business limitations in place to offer the service as intended. Verklin did, however, stress Canoe’s commitment to the CAM concept and said the group would try it again down the road with a more flexible configuration. The rock on which the project founded was said to be the level of incompatibility between Motorola and Cisco (SA) STBs.
Canoe CEO David Verklin said “At some point you have to decide, Is that dog going to hunt? We were trying to use 20th-century technology to enable a 21st-century advanced-advertising product.”