The Direct Marketing Association has recognized Canoe Ventures, the advanced television joint venture of the nation’s premier cable companies, with a 2011 Innovation Award, at the DMA 2011 Annual Conference & Exhibition in Boston.

Officials said that the DMA Innovations Awards are determined by a distinguished panel of judges who review nominations extolling advancements in marketing technology.

 “The proliferation of leading-edge solutions and technologies has made this the toughest year of selections in the three years since the program started,” said Bruce Biegel, managing director, Winterberry Group, and an Innovation Awards judge, in a release. “We are extremely proud of the winners, as I know their solutions will be the new game changing moments in marketing technology.”

Canoe has been declared a winner in the DMA’s “Digital Media Marketing” category for its RFI (News - Alert) product, which is a national interactive television application. It allows for the enhancement of advertising with interactive overlays that helps viewers to request additional samples, coupons, information or other offers with simple selections using their remote.

Marketers, with the help of RFI will be able to combine the unparalleled emotional power of television advertising with direct marketing tactics. This will further help them to transform advertising from monologue to dialogue and move consumers from intent to action.

Kathy Timko, Canoe’s CEO. “With our RFI product, advertisers can connect directly with interested viewers while enhancing brand factors that are good for their business including awareness, opinion and purchase intent. We are pleased to receive this honor from the DMA on behalf of the cable companies who founded us and who collaborated to make national ITV a reality.”

In related news, Canoe Ventures has selected S3 Group’s (News - Alert) StormTest Development Center as the automated testing solution for Canoe's national deployment of Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format enabled ITV applications.