UK IPTV advertising start up Packet Vision has landed its first public contract with Inuk Networks. The company was formed two years ago and launched with founder and initial CEO Patrick Christian, to offer addressable advertising from specialized advertising servers in an IPTV network.
Inuk Networks is a UK operation that offers TV to PCs and across student networks in the UK in a service called Freewire. This is already available to 15,000 students at universities and colleges through PCs with set-top box emulation software. Inuk will use Packet Vision’s ad insertion technology to deliver ads direct to a targeted youth audience.
In February last year Packet Vision landed its second round of funding, just £1 million ($1.8 million) to continue development of its addressable advertising system based around multiple MIPS chips, acting as an advertising server, splicer, router and management system for delivering demographically targeted ads to IPTV networks.
It is a first attempt at personalizing TV advertising and can insert 200 separate adverts per 19 inch rack mounted blade running on Linux, working with standard IGMP multicasts.