Suddenlink Deploys OpenTV's EclipsePlus Ad Campaign Management System

Interactive TV and advanced advertising technology provider, OpenTV, announced Tuesday that its OpenTV Eclipse ad campaign management platform has now gone live at Suddenlink Media, the advertising arm of top-10 cable operator, Suddenlink Communications. The Suddenlink deployment was originally announced in May by OpenTV CEO, Ben Bennett, during the company's Q1 earnings conference call (see the article published on itvt.com, May 8th).

According to OpenTV, EclipsePlus will manage all Suddenlink's local ad sales operations for its central and western US ad sales divisions. "Our decision to upgrade our ad insertion platform was a major undertaking which required a solution that is capable, scalable and reputable, and OpenTV delivered with great technology and great service, making this the best technology transition we've had," Kevin Stephens, Suddenlink's SVP of commercial and advertising operations, said in a prepared statement. "With our more than 2,700 channels of insertion, we needed a system that could manage a significant number of channels, and EclipsePlus was the solution of choice. We are now well prepared to support our growing ad sales operations with a solution that has already demonstrated many advantages." Added OpenTV's SVP and general manager of advanced advertising, Paul Woidke: "This new deal demonstrates OpenTV's expanding footprint in US cable and establishes EclipsePlus as the premier campaign management solution for large enterprise installations, such as Suddenlink. It once again demonstrates the advanced capabilities EclipsePlus can offer for large implementation data center deployments and division backoffice systems, and we're delighted to bring our technology to one of the country's top MSO's."

OpenTV claims that EclipsePlus will enable Suddenlink to efficiently monetize the real-time data exchange between its sales and inventory management systems. The company bills the platform as being capable of handling thousands of local and interconnect networks, scheduling complicated channel environments, and running multiple DMA's within a single database, thereby reducing manual workload and time spent running verification and billing reports on spot buys. The platform also incorporates a dynamic scheduler, which OpenTV says continuously analyzes current and upcoming schedules in order to optimize yields.