Transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) as substitutes to metals could offer many advantages for low-loss plasmonic and metamaterial (MM) applications in the near infrared (NIR) regime. By employing a lift-off process, we fabricated 2D-periodic arrays of TCO nanodisks and characterized the material's plasmonic properties to evaluate the performance of TCOs as metal substitutes. © 2013 The Optical Society.