David Verklin: Advertising to the interested is what we're all trying to do. Advertise to the interested. Put dog food commercials just in front of people who own a dog. And that's really the promise of something like Project Canoe [the former moniker of Canoe Ventures].

The six major U.S. cable companies have come together to create a national technology platform to bring interactivity to television advertising.

Think about this: You'll be watching a Kraft macaroni and cheese ad someday, and in the not-too-distant future, and the pop-up menu will come up. And it will say push "A" if you want a coupon or push "B" if you would like a free sample.

We're not that far off from maybe three years from today, when you're watching a commercial on television, and it'll say push "C" if you'd like to buy this product...It'll be charged to your cable TV bill.

The promise of something like Project Canoe and the cable television industry is bringing interactivity to television advertising and programming, and two, to bring new kinds of targeting to television advertising.

David Verklin: Yes.

David Verklin: We have to be very, very concerned about privacy, and I believe there are two ways to solve the problem.

One way to control the advertising you see is the survey-based method. Fill out a survey maybe administered by your cable company and you check off categories of ads you'd like to see and not like to see. I don't think there's any privacy issue there...

The part of the future that people are more concerned with is what's called behavioral targeting. This is the idea of watching and keeping track of the television programs you've watched and keeping track of the website you visited and using that information to adjust the advertising load that comes into your house. That will be where the privacy debate will take place over the next 36 months: whether people are comfortable with that or not.

Cable is one of the most highly regulated industries in the media business, so there's a lot of regulation that's going to have to be discussed to allow the cable companies to keep track of your viewing and take a look at your websites in order to adjust the advertising load.

Personally I think it can be done in a way that your name and address would never be known; same way that cookies [on the Internet] are done. I would argue if you have concerns about privacy on television, why do you not have those same concerns about how Google's tracking your behavior on the Web?

David Verklin: You can delete cookies but not completely. But I won't go technically into that.

I would say the solution to this is an opt-in situation. If you do not want to have your advertising load adjusted, then either do a survey-based method and we'll adjust your advertising load that way, or opt out.

The privacy issue will be a key issue that the cable operators as well as the advertising industry has got to debate over the next 36 months. But the flip side is we'd really like to put advertising in front of you that you're interested in. If you're not interested in it, it's bad for all parts of the food chain.