Subject: JANCO comments on ACTV News from today
From vaman22309
PostID 48918 On Wednesday, January 10, 2001 (EST) at 2:46:03 PM
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ACTV, INC. (IATV - NASDAQ - $4 - BUY) announced this morning that it has
effectively acquired the assets of VisionTel, Inc., a subsidiary of nCUBE
whose
principal product is an advertising sales management software suite designed
for cable, broadband, broadcast, satellite and Internet services. ACTV has
placed the assets of VisionTel under the Digital ADCO umbrella to form a new
entity called AdVision Systems, LLC. AdVision will be majority owned by ACTV
(with nCUBE holding a minority stake), who will manage day-to day operations.
Tom Walsh, current President of VisionTel, will join ACTV along with the
majority of VisionTel's software development, sales, customer support and
software assurance staff. The creation of AdVision allows ACTV to offer a
more
complete suite of services that will enable cable operators to easily
implement interactive advertising campaigns. AdVision's suite of software
products will allow MSOs to effectively manage their ad sales and billing
processes (selling four spots for an interactive ad versus the traditional
single spot will require some reconfiguration) in the interactive world. In
addition, AdVision will allow MSOs to track the effectiveness of
advertisements
(ad clicks will be measured as well as information as to how many people asked
for more information, how many people purchased a product, etc.). We expect
that AdVision will be built into the data-mining portion of the Digital ADCO
model in the future (We have not yet modeled data mining, but believe it will
prove to be a major portion of Digital ADCO's revenue in the future.).
Through
the creation of AdVision, Digital ADCO has strengthened its existing
relationship with nCUBE, the second largest provider of ad insertion software
and services (behind SeaChange). In addition, we expect ACTV will leverage
VisionTel's existing client base, which includes AT&T, Time Warner, and Cox,
among others, to market its interactive advertising on a larger scale. ACTV
share value continues to struggle under the pressure that remains on the
interactive television sector (valuations are based on future revenue streams
and cash flows from businesses that have not yet begun to be rolled out in
mass). We believe ACTV currently has the critical partnerships in place to
move forward aggressively with the rollout of both its ''One-to-One'' and
HyperTV
technologies. Through the timely distribution of its patented ''One-to-One'' and
HyperTV technologies, we believe ACTV can take advantage of future demand for
interactivity (from both the consumer and the MSO) and become a significant
player in the emerging world of interactive television. We continue to
believe
that ACTV represents an attractive risk/reward scenario and we rate shares of
ACTV as a BUY. |
