Canoe Ventures' New Innovation Lab to Integrate With CableLabs' AdLab for End-To-End Next-Generation Ad Testing & Prototyping Environment

Louisville, Colorado and New York, February 11, 2010—Canoe Ventures and CableLabs today announced a partnership between Canoe Ventures' new Innovation Lab and CableLabs' AdLab, as part of their ongoing collaboration to support the development and deployment of new advanced advertising technologies and services.

The first test of the new environment will prototype and evaluate the technologies required for an end-to-end infrastructure based on SCTE 130 standards. This prototype-only environment was developed with the participation of Cisco, OpenTV, Ericsson, Motorola and This Technology, LLC. Canoe and CableLabs plan to work with other SCTE 130, OpenCable and EBIF-compliant technology and service providers for additional testing and prototyping projects moving forward.

The SCTE 130 standard is a multipart specification that defines how advertising-placement servers (ad decisions systems or ADS) communicate with video-delivery equipment (ad managers or ADM). It supports a unified platform for dynamic, addressable, and interactive ad insertion, while merging inventory metadata (placement opportunity information or POIS), content metadata (CIS), and subscriber metadata (SIS). Canoe and CableLabs are creating an environment emulating a Canoe hosted national network ADS capable of interacting with distributed MSO SCTE 130-compliant systems. CableLabs and the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers hosted an interoperability event at CableLabs' headquarters November 9-13, 2009 to focus on SCTE 130. It was the industry's largest and most comprehensive Advanced Advertising Interop to date, with 24 companies participating.

"We're excited by the launch of the Innovation Lab, where we'll prototype and evaluate Canoe's product and services roadmap with potential technology partners and their relevant offerings," said Arthur Orduña, Chief Technology Officer of Canoe Ventures. "We're also pleased with our initial set of technology providers who are helping us prototype a national and local SCTE 130-compliant infrastructure. These vendors - Cisco, OpenTV, Motorola Ericsson and This Technology, LLC - provided mature and interoperable products and services that allowed us to create a working lab environment quickly and effectively."

"This announcement marks yet another milestone in the strong partnership between CableLabs and Canoe," said Ralph Brown, Chief Technology Officer of CableLabs. "Since the CableLabs' AdLab simulates an SCTE130-compliant MSO delivery system, connecting to Canoe's Innovation Lab provides examples of both a national network and MSO ad sales and delivery infrastructure. Together, it creates an end-to-end advanced advertising environment that models a working Canoe connection to an MSO for our owners to proof and prototype next-generation infrastructure, processes, devices and interfaces."

"All of the participating vendors are strong supporters of the SCTE 130 standard, and proud to be a part of the Canoe Innovations Lab and the CableLabs AdLab," said Paul Woidke, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Advanced Advertising, OpenTV and Chair of SCTE DVS Working Group 5. "Both OpenTV and Ericsson provided SCTE-130 campaign management systems for national networks and MSOs, respectively [ADS]. These campaign managers interoperate thanks to Cisco's SCTE-130 ad router/broker [ADS/ADM] and This Technology's advertising space policy server [POIS/CIS]. The installation of these systems creates the SCTE-130 environment, which worked with the Cisco and Motorola VOD servers at CableLabs and makes it possible to extend the local and national ad sales and delivery system to other platforms. This is just the beginning."

"These vendors have been long-time contributors to past CableLabs' interoperability events in support of SCTE DVS Working Group 5, but CableLabs' AdLab is open to all vendors developing products in this space, and we welcome new technology companies who are just now entering the market," said Don Dulchinos, Senior Vice President of Advanced Platforms for CableLabs. Canoe and CableLabs demonstrated the initial test environment at CableLabs annual Winter Conference, February 7–10, in Denver, CO.

About CableLabs: Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. A non-profit research and development consortium, CableLabs delivers innovations that enable cable operators to be the providers of choice in their markets. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org and www.ebif.tv.

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