Comcast, HBO and others join CTAM for TV Everywhere summer awareness push

Cable companies and programmers will embark on a summer promotional campaign to push pay-TV customers to use TV Everywhere services, encouraging subscribers to "watch on the go."

The campaign will be led by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) and will run from July 26 to August 8. Cable operators including Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), Cox Communications and Mediacom will participate in the awareness push, which will include TV commercials, as well as messages on websites and social media.

Programmers including Turner Networks, HBO and Univision will also participate, according to Reuters.

"We need to become much more consumer-centric and be where consumers want to be," said CTAM president and CEO John Lansing to the news service. "TV Everywhere is that product for our industry."

Specifically, on CTAM's website the group said its goal for this year is to increase TV Everywhere awareness among pay-TV customers from 65 percent to 75 percent, and to increase TV Everywhere usage from 55 percent to 65 percent.

Six years after the pay-TV industry's multi-screen effort launched, TV Everywhere remains troubled by low customer usage, as well as awareness that it even exists. 

Lately, however, some of the key metrics have improved. According to an Adobe Primetime study, in the first quarter of this year 45 percent of pay-TV consumers used an authenticated multiscreen service through their pay-TV provider. Adobe also said that 18 percent of pay-TV subscribers use the service monthly. 

Still, "the authentication numbers are significantly below" what might be considered mainstream use, Hardie Tankersley, senior VP of Innovation for Fox Broadcasting, told a panel audience in San Francisco last month. "There could be a million reasons why. There are lots of rickety things in the system."

For more:
- read this Reuters story

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Update: An earlier verson of this story incorrectly included Time Warner Cable in the campaign.