While much of the cable industry is still working on getting its canoe seaworthy, Rovi is promising refinements to its user interface-based advertising system with upgrades aimed at making targeted advertising easier and more effective for members of its Advertising Network.

Two of the key members of the Rovi Advertising Network are Samsung and Sony, both of which can already deliver ads to users of their connected TVs. Currently, Rovi's advertising services, products and technologies together reach more than 40 million households globally.

Separately, Rovi and Nielsen reported usage statistics that provide further indication that interactive advertising on TVs has tremendous potential.

As for its Ad Network enhancements, Rovi said it will soon provide new targeting capabilities for identifying TV consumers based on a range of geographic, demographic and psychographic data. Targeting can be based on postal code, continent, direct marketing area, age or household income.

Google is the paradigm for ad targeting based on search, and Rovi is bringing that to the search and discovery process in TV; the new targeting capability can also be based on viewers' genre-based searches, among other options, the company said.

The company said it also plans to make possible pre-roll video insertion and the ability to embed long-form video within a dedicated advertiser portal.

Rovi is also preparing request for information (RFI) support for click-to-call, email and quick response (QR) codes within advertisements. And social networking options are also on the way.

Rovi is planning to include TV commerce capabilities to make it possible for consumers to immediately purchase product and services that are seen in and associated with related video programming simply by using their remote control.

This all has to be backed by measurement capabilities. Rovi said it is bolstering its ad measurement and reporting tools with more metrics.

Meanwhile, Rovi and Nielsen recently conducted a survey meant to gauge ad engagement and campaign effectiveness of interactive advertising on the connected platform. The survey results were combined with some trial information.

Highlights include:

• 80 percent of viewers report that they notice the presence of ads; a third of those chose to click on them.
• In one instance, 70 percent of viewers provided their email address while visiting an interactive channel.
• 97 percent who clicked/interacted with ads had the intent to view.