The Comcast Media Center and icueTV are serving up a full suite of t-commerce interactive applications to cable operator customers through the CMC’s Hits Advanced Interactive Services (AxIS) platform.
With the agreement between the CMC and icueTV, Hits AxIS-supported subscribers will be offered a slate of interactive t-commerce applications: click to e-mail, click to purchase, voting, polling, and audio and video downloads. Participating MSOs will also have instant access to a suite of business and management tools, allowing for real-time data analysis and lead generation tracking.
It also creates multiple touch points that may be used by television programming networks and advertisers to enhance and further monetize their relationships with viewers.
“This is a natural progression of icueTV’s relationship with Hits,” said Patrick Gates, CEO of icueTV. “They have lab tested our technology; we collaborated at The Cable Show ’09 and successfully demonstrated our platform at the recent Cable Labs Summer Conference. Most recently, we were an integral part of the Hits AxIS demonstrations that were held in conjunction with the fall Cable Connection events in Denver.
“We are now at the point of our collaboration to move forward with deployment and partnering with MSOs. This agreement makes true interactivity real.”
Launched last year, the CMC’s AxIS is a centralized platform that was designed to support EBIF and tru2way interactive services, while also facilitating the launch of those interactive services on cable systems that serve small- to mid-size markets.
In October, the CMC announced that the Hits AxIS platform was ready to support commercial deployments of iTV services by cable operators.
In addition to the icueTV platform, other applications announced in October included a “Yellow Pages on TV” application from FourthWall Media, which was formerly known as Biap.
The Comcast Media Center has been testing interactive services this year with several cable operators, including BendBroadband, Buckeye CableSystem, Metrocast Communications and Sunflower Broadband. Buckeye’s testing included a dashboard application and a Yellow Pages application.
“The field trials with our beta MSO affiliates have allowed us to test a variety of revenue-driven ETV applications over a wide range of cable system architectures,” said Gary Traver, senior vice president and chief operating officer of the Comcast Media Center. “Thanks to the technical and consumer knowledge we acquired during the trials, we are ready to support the rollout of iTV applications that can enhance the video experience for digital cable customers and net additional revenues for cable operators and their interactive content providers.”
