Looking to tap into ad budgets for the 2012 election season, interactive TV developer Strategy & Technology and TV-commerce vendor icueTV have developed a joint solution that would let cable operators deploy an EBIF application to let subscribers donate to their favorite political candidate.

The companies are demonstrating the solution at the CableLabs Winter Conference 2012, which is open to only members of the consortium and invited vendors.

In the demo, S&T's TSBroadcaster streams the scheduled icueTV application, which interacts with FourthWall Media's EBIF user agents. The icueTV app will present a scheduled delivery of a response to a political campaign donation promotion from a set-top box to a smartphone using its "Click to Text" application.

The development is the industry's latest effort to show that interactive TV is healthy, in spite of the decision last month by Canoe Ventures -- the joint venture of the country's six largest cable operators -- to abandon its national TV advertising business.

"Recent announcements aside, ITV is alive and well. Our relationship with S&T will create a true, end-to-end solution for MSOs and advertisers," iCueTV CEO and founder Michael Huegel said in a statement. "That is a real value proposition."

The political-donation app appears as an overlay on an advertiser's television commercial. A viewer is prompted to enter his or her mobile phone number, and once confirmed a text message will be electronically delivered to the smartphone with the link to the campaign promotion and website.

"S&T is pleased to once again collaborate with our colleagues at icueTV to demonstrate an innovative offering for advertisers, programmers and MSOs, and an especially timely application in this presidential election year," added Adrian Fowkes, S&T's CTO of Americas.

In large part because of the Canoe initiative, cable operators have activated EBIF -- CableLabs' Enhanced TV Binary Interchange Format interactive TV specification -- for some 25 million households across the U.S.