Cablevision is rolling out a dynamic, cloud-based advertising platform with ActiveVideo later this year, which will leverage HTML5 to deliver graphics-rich interactive ads to television. 

Cablevision's initial trial deployment will include American Express (News – Alert) and its interactive TV app, dubbed "Amex NOW."  

The CloudTV AdCast platform supports ads written once in HTML5 to be extended to TV in a more seamless way that reduces costs and accelerates time to market for advertisers.

"Pay-TV's efforts to scale interactive TV advertising repeatedly have been hindered by the fragmentation and limited resources of the millions of existing set-top boxes," said Jeff Miller, president and CEO of ActiveVideo. "Cablevision's market leadership is enabling brands to bring to television the personalization, interactivity and metrics that have driven the success of Web ads."

Historically, there’s been a technology issue in interactive multiscreen advertising: moving content across all those screens is a challenging prospect. In fact, one of the biggest obstacles to the development of the market is fragmentation in terms of devices and operating systems. Developing rich-media ads requires the development of different formats for each type of set-top, resulting in a complex, expensive process that leaves advertisers facing decisions as to where to put their development dollars.

HTML5 meanwhile is emerging as the new standard for Web content and digital advertising because it’s more flexible than other platforms like Flash, because it’s supported on every browser and device. That helps bridge many of the issues presented by device fragmentation.

In a recent Google (News – Alert) study, 88 percent of advertising professionals said that they believe HTML5 will have a positive impact on the advertising industry because it can act as a universal platform that lets them create content that can be synced across browsers and devices.

Debuted earlier this year at CES (News – Alert), CloudTV AdCast makes use of that: it enables interactive TV ads to be rendered in the cloud, streamed regardless of graphics, memory and processing power of devices, and allows the content to be navigated via existing remote controls.

Cablevision advertisers will also be able to gain better data insights into the actual effectiveness of their ad buys, viewer engagement, response-rates and conversion. Advertisers and their agencies can then further optimize their campaigns and ad messaging.

"Simplifying the process for advertisers to extend interactive ads to television is a key objective for Cablevision," said Ben Tatta, president of Cablevision Media Sales.  "We look forward to the launch of AdCast and the introduction of new, more robust ad solutions for American Express and all of our valued clients."