Having been there at the “beginning” of digital video as TCI and Cox blazed the way with their initial deployments in 1996-97, I have witnessed many changes in the way networks are built and managed. In those initial deployments, digital video was a bit of a science project as we all learned along the way. That was followed with “cookie cutter” deployments in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s when the goal was to get digital to as many subscribers as possible as quickly as possible to combat the growing threat from satellite. The last few years have seen video begin to evolve into a variety of narrowcast service models (VOD, SDV, nPVR) to compete with the growing online video business. As this transition has begun, the complexity of video networks has exploded with the number of “moving parts” growing dramatically. Whereas those early days saw a digital system contain maybe a dozen new devices, a medium size VOD system may see 1,000 new QAM channels!

As the network has evolved, we “video-heads” have had to learn more about the data world with our MPEG streams now carried across the same backbone IP network as DOCSIS services. This trend is now moving from the backbone to the access network with the introduction of DOCSIS 3.0 and eventual separation of the QAM and data layers of the CMTS.

What does this new world mean for vendors? It means that the days of a single vendor creating an end-to-end delivery network are gone. For the mutual benefit of our customers and ourselves, we need to work together to not simply make a system work but also to make it operationally friendly – easy to install and maintain. The introduction of universal QAM modulators, spanning all services is one way that we as vendors can help our end customers. But we cannot just stop at developing best-of-breed products – we need strong cooperation and integration among ourselves to enable the technologies, and ultimately applications, that our customers require to be deployed.

Whether it is video, data or data that is video, the growing complexities of our customers’ networks compels those in the vendor community to work together to ensure that we all benefit. Here at RGB, we are taking an aggressive stance towards the development of an integration capability to assist our customers – you’ll hear more from me on that in future posts.

In my previous blog post I wrote about the decline of ad dollars going to newspapers, radio, and broadcast TV that started in 2001 and the double digit growth in internet advertising spending that started at about that same time.  Advertising Age posted an article, “Marketers to Up Spending in Cable, Online, Mobile in Next 6 Months,” that describes this continuing trend for 2009 and the growing pessimism surrounding these traditional media. Interestingly enough the article paints a brighter picture for cable TV.

One reason for this better picture for cable is that the audience share for cable programming continues to increase versus broadcast TV.  Another and maybe more important reason is that the cable industry is taking steps to make advertising on its platform more targetable, interactive, and measureable – attributes that have attracted advertisers to the internet – with Canoe Ventures leading the way for the industry.

As the article mentions, they are “seeing less slowing in media that is more accountable and targetable,” and that the results (and measurement of those results) of ad campaigns are very important to marketers, maybe even more so than price.

Because of the connectivity that cable has to the home, cable is a great platform to enable advertising that is targetable, interactive, and measureable.  Cable systems are already divided into geographic territories through their headend, hub, and node structure.  VOD, for example, is divided into service groups made up of a few nodes where a separate QAM channel feeds only those homes in the node.  Using this structure, the cable industry already sends different ads to or tags the same ad with different content for different geographic areas.  With VOD, switched digital video (SDV), or applications in the set top box, cable can extend this targeting to the subscriber level.

In addition, the ability to overlay graphics on top of a video program coupled with mechanisms such as EBIF to encapsulate and transmit the content of these graphics is a great way to enable interactivity on the television screen.   Cable systems can also gather measurement information such as viewing data from set tops, knowing if and when an ad was inserted in the network or set top, click through data, and time spent on interactivity – all of which are very important to advertisers.

All of these capabilities allow the cable industry to create a new ad platform with the highly desirable attributes of targeting, interactivity, and measurability that are causing such upheavals in the advertising industry guaranteeing a bright future for cable television advertising.