2,000,000 new digital cable TV customers in Europe in first half of 2007

Cable Europe, representing the cable TV industry in Europe, announced that cable TV operators in Europe added more than two million digital TV customers in the first half of 2007. The cable industry is expected to count more than 16 million digital TV customers by year-end 2007, what would be a record growth of +60% year-on-year. This was announced at Cable meets Content, a Cable Europe event bringing together senior management from both the cable and content industries, concurrently with MIPCOM in Cannes.

Cable networks in Europe reach more than 100 million homes and provide digital TV, broadband internet and fixed line telephony services to 70 million customers.

“Digital cable TV to take a piece of the advertisement pie”

The predicted record growth set the perfect mood for the 2007 edition of Cable meets Content, taking place in Cannes on the evening of October 10. This year’s topic focused on how the cable industry could further monetise its fast growing digital TV customer base by providing interactive and enhanced advertisement services.

One possibility for cable could be to enable better targeted TV advertisement. After all, besides red-button TV adds, the digital cable TV set top box provides the cable operators plenty of information about the preferences and behaviour of their digital TV customers.

If and how to monetise this intelligence was subject of a presentation by Thierry Bouffioux, CEO Greenwich Consulting Benelux. His main conclusion: “Cable entering the advertisement business is not only an opportunity to drive new incremental revenues, it also allows cable to engage in the evolution shift of the TV model and provide additional service value that should protect from end user churn.”

After the Greenwich Consulting presentation a panel of industry experts shared their views on the subject. The panel: Gary Marenzi, Co-President, Worldwide Television Distribution, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios; Shane O’Neill, Chief Strategy Officer Liberty Global and CEO Chellomedia; Ulf Johansson, debuty CEO Com Hem and Thierry Bouffioux, and Kate Bulkley, journalist , who moderated the panel.

More: Greenwich Consulting presentation “Cable to take a piece of the advertisement pie”