Cable Industry Weighs Its Approach to Targeted Ads

With the recession squeezing ad budgets, cable companies are redoubling their efforts to mimic Internet advertising, in part by offering a way to target ads at selected groups of consumers. But the industry is divided on the best approach for delivering such ads. Canoe Ventures -- a project of the country's six largest cable operators -- is poised to launch its first ad-targeting product, called community addressable messaging. The technology will allow advertisers to select cable households within particular areas that have demographic factors, such as income, in common. Canoe is made up of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Cablevision Systems Corp., Charter Communications and Brighthouse Networks, which together have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the venture. It is in talks with several cable networks to roll out a scaled-down version of its ad-targeting technology this summer. Meanwhile, National Cable Communications, an industry group that sells local ad spots for cable operators including Comcast, Cox and Time Warner Cable, along with a number of smaller operators, has created a browser-based software that allows advertisers to buy swaths of households, based on criteria such as income, ethnicity and geography, from 2,900 zones across the country.