MRG Evening Meeting – Interactivity
Wednesday night’s packed Media Research Group (MRG) Evening Meeting covered the issue of Interactive television, the future for BARB and direct response versus traditional research methods.
The speakers were ‘Action Man’ Hugh Johnson, head of commercial marketing and research at Channel 4, Julian Dobinson, head of research at BSkyB and Karen Mayer, head of interactive TV at Quantum.
Johnson spoke about the advertising possibilities afforded by digital TV in terms of both low-tech and hi-tech interactivity, from advertisements which may pull the viewer away from the broadcast for a short time in order to get their message across, to adverts containing a company’s URL to encourage visits at the viewers convenience. Examples of different types of adverts were shown and Johnson talked about changes which would have to be made by BARB to cope with increased fragmentation of the market, new technology and so on.
Dobinson then spoke about changes to research methods as television viewing changed from a passive to an interactive experience. He claimed that Sky’s recent interactive advert for Chicken Tonight – the first of it’s kind to be broadcast nationally – created a “significant number of responses”. Sky predict that by 2003 13m UK homes will have access to digital TV.
In the not too distant future Personal Video Recorders will be available to record up to 30 hours of programmes and will remember an individual’s taste through previous choices. The number of hours it is able to record will increase as the cost of computer memory falls and niche programmes, shown at what may be considered antisocial hours, will increase the need for video recording.
Such divergence of viewing habits coupled with new technologies and greater fragmentation of channels and broadcasting will mean that research methods must be compatible in order to obtain accurate data. Set top boxes may be used to measure viewing and send the information back to the broadcaster – in the US, TIVO is already doing this – but information on the household would need to be obtained somehow and only the set connected to the platform would be measured.
Dobinson saw the role of industry research in the future as managing multi-platform data, combining small people-meter panels with large set-based data and managing audit/quality control.
Mayer talked about the work that Quantum have done recently with Domino’s Pizza, amongst other clients, to create TV based e-commerce shops. Soon they hope to introduce an interactive ordering service allowing the viewer to order the pizza of their choice before returning to their chosen broadcast.
She envisaged that the power of BARB data will be challenged by data generated by what is rapidly becoming known as t-commerce but still acknowledged a role for BARB in terms of providing accurate panel-based data.