I don’t know why the cable operators are calling their interactive advertising effort Project Canoe, but they are. The New York Times published an interesting story yesterday on the initiative. Highlights include:

But such newfangled advertising models are something the cable industry has promised for years, and until they see them on a large scale, advertisers and investors will remain cautious.

That is why the industry has not made a more public splash about the initiative and why executives involved with the project asked not to be identified.

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.

I’d say that this is interesting, but it just isn’t. This is old news for interactive television going back five years to the 4A’s and their iTV developments. I’ve been working with my colleagues: Anette Schaefer, Anton Denissov and Tara Howard on this very topic. We’ve spent the better part of the past three months trying to answer this core question of interactivity and where it will lead video advertising.

And no matter how you slice it, the numbers just don’t add up as quickly as everyone says that they will. Sure, it’s a great idea for the cable operators to standardize their interactive products — that’s a way to maximize the advertising that they’ll sell. And I applaud the work that Tracey Scheppach at Starcom has been doing. They’re spot-on with the concept that the MSOs will have to offer standardized infrastructure for the cable networks to be able to sell standardized ad units. It’s good business all the way around.

For each hour of programming on a cable network, the cable operator owns about two minutes that it can sell to advertisers. The network, say ESPN or TNT, owns about 15 minutes that it can sell.

Because the only way to deliver custom television advertising is through a cable set-top box, Project Canoe is also a way for the cable companies to get a piece of the advertising revenue. This is done by allowing cable networks like ESPN or a broadcast network like CBS to sell ads on Project Canoe’s platform and direct those ads using the vast amount of data collected from set-top boxes.

The cable operators are talking about driving an additional $10 billion in advertising revenue from platforms that currently generate $5.7 billion. I haven’t heard Starcom’s pitch, but we’re looking at a standards activity that probably won’t lead to product for another 18-24 months. And by the time cable comes to market with standardized interactive advertising deployable to enough households for advertisers to take notice, a larger number of households in the US will have broadband internet connections.

How hard will it be to connect your computer to your television at that time? A cable? Wait. That works today.

And what will Apple bring to market in the interim?