AT&T Eyes SeaChange for TV Everywhere Ad Trial

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is kicking the tires on a new software platform from SeaChange International Inc. (Nasdaq: SEAC) designed to insert ads dynamically into on-demand and live video shipped to set-tops as well as to tablets, PCs and smartphones, Light Reading Cable has learned.

An AT&T official confirmed that the telco is in the "evaluation phase" with SeaChange's recently launched Infusion platform, which aims to preserve the advertising business model as service providers extend video services to more types of screens. (See SeaChange Scales up For Advanced Ads.)

It's not known when AT&T might pull the trigger on trialing or deploying Infusion, but the telco is already scaling up its use of SeaChange's Spot ad-insertion scheduler, which is splicing spots into U-verse TV's linear channels. Infusion essentially combines Spot with AdPulse, its video-on-demand ad system. On the hardware side, AT&T is already using BigBand Networks Inc.'s Media Services Platform (now part of Arris Group Inc. (Nasdaq: ARRS)) to insert ads into live TV streams. (See AT&T Deal Boosts BigBand.)

If SeaChange gets a revenue-generating deployment out of this, it would gain a high-profile customer for its new TV Everywhere-focused ad system. At last week's 2012 International CES, SeaChange announced a partnership with video processing vendor Envivio Inc. (NASDAQ: ENVI) aimed at delivering demographically targeted ads to iPads. (See SeaChange Enables Apple Device Ad Insertion.)

SeaChange isn't confirming details of its relationship with AT&T.

"While we can't confirm any of the names of our top-tier customers, we are steadily growing our customer base and have deployed our multiscreen, advertising and content solutions with more than 30 telco customers at this point -- some Tier 1 operators, and other mid- and smaller-tier operators as well," a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

— Jeff Baumgartner, Site Editor, Light Reading Cable