If you ask us, something that even Google may fear shouldn’t be called “Project Canoe.” No one at Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, or Time Warner Cable stopped by, however, and so their ad-related project is (for the time being) named after a small, motor-less boat.
Google TV Ads
As part of Project Canoe, the six cable giants would create a jointly owned entity. Tim Arango reports, “Collectively, the cable companies will initially put about $150 million behind the effort in order to build a national service that can sell targeted advertising across all six cable systems.”
That dollar figure could be higher, but the idea otherwise sounds quite impressive. Now, to bring up poor old Google . . . Its online dominance is well-recognized, and just last week, the company’s TV Ads Beta got some publicity. But against six strong incumbents, the new program seems to have little chance.
Assuming neither Project Canoe nor Google TV Ads gets abandoned entirely, we expect to see a sort of race to the finish line. Long-term, the projects’ ability to match ads to audiences will be important, but availability might be an even more critical factor. Unlaunched products have market shares of exactly zero.
In the meantime, we’re checking whether anyone’s interested in hiring some name-thinker-uppers.
