In an effort to promote interactive television among networks, advertisers and cable operators, Canoe Ventures has released usage guidelines for ExpandTV.

Canoe Ventures first talked up the ExpandTV initiative at The Cable Show earlier this year. The goal of ExpandTV is to let viewers know that a program or ad is interactive. The ExpandTV moniker can sit alongside other brands and content to signal that a deeper interactive experience is available to the viewer by using their remotes. Viewers can also opt out of an interactive experience with one click of their remotes.

The guidelines are available on ExpandTV.com, which was launched at The Cable Show.

ExpandTV was the end result of an industry-wide brand initiative led by Canoe, in tandem with the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau (CAB), the Cable & Telecommunications Association of Marketing (CTAM), CableLabs and Canoe’s financial backers – including Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable – as well as national advertising and cable television programming partners.

“In another of the cable industry’s milestone collaborative achievements, we now have a program that the entire industry can rally around to promote the adoption of iTV,” said Vicki Lins, chief marketing officer of Canoe. “The industry has a rich legacy of collaboration to enhance the marketing efforts of each individual company through the use of common brands and nomenclature; it is exciting to see ExpandTV become that next big thing for the industry. With several operators ramping their local iTV ad sales and that national platform enabled by Canoe also scaling, now is the perfect time to prime the marketplace with a consumer brand and education program.”

The ExpandTV brand is managed and licensed by Canoe. ExpandTV replaced a previous branding effort that was called SelecTV.