NewsLine Column: Lowering the Veil On Interactive TV Advertising
Brands have been relatively slow to catch onto the potential of interactive TV advertising, but the increasing uptake of digital TV and the success of Big Brother is turning brands on to the potential of the medium. Doug Stoddart, director of interactive solutions consultancy, Purple Lizard, explains…
The opportunity for TV advertising to evolve from a passive one way experience to an engaging two way communicative process has been enticing agencies to dip their toes into the dark unknown waters of interactive TV (iTV) for some time now. But so far the price of interactive advertising has been too great for most.
A combination of fear of the unknown and high barriers to entry has kept all but the most pioneering of advertising agencies from experimenting with the medium. But this period of uncertainty is coming to an end.
The success of Big Brother appears to have awoken the public’s interest in interactive television. Suddenly iTV viewers understand that pressing the red button on their Sky remote allows them to interact with the programme they are watching. Advertisers know that sooner or later, people will want to do the same with advertisements.
An iTV presence offers credibility and kudos to a brand when executed professionally. The iTV sector is maturing and key players within the market have seen the need to lower the barriers to entry for production companies and advertisers. The cost of producing interactive advertising campaigns and mainstream iTV programmes is coming down. Hardware is getting cheaper and producers can now buy customisable interactive applications ‘off the shelf’. These ready made applications suit a wide range of interactive functions and represent a significant cost saving for programme makers wanting to make iTV content.
The key to producing a successful interactive advertising campaign is to recognise the best elements of the medium. Advertisers considering using iTV should approach it more as they would do with a traditional terrestrial TV campaign, rather than an online campaign.
For example advertisers should avoid overly complex elements that iTV offers such as text and form based activities. Instead efforts should be concentrated on taking advantage of the streaming audio and video functionality that the medium excels at.
Perhaps the best example of this is high quality trailers and short movies. iTV has the capability to remove the viewer from the main broadcast stream to run a two-three minute video in place of a 30-second advertisement. Payment for this service could be charged to the advertiser in a similar way to the cost per click model used in online advertising.
We will eventually see advertising campaigns appearing on iTV which exploit the cross platform nature of new media. As demonstrated with Big Brother this year, initiatives that cover a range of different communication technologies such as SMS, telephone, PDA, internet, terrestrial TV and iTV can be extremely effective. Each medium can offer a different angle on the campaign, and reach a different sub-set of the target audience, all delivering the same core messages to the recipient.
Many advertising campaigns are not and will never be suited to the iTV medium. Advertisers need to justify why an advertisement needs to be interactive.
I believe we have reached a stage where making iTV advertising is both realistic and affordable – especially with the revenue generating possibilities that interactivity can offer. It’s time for production companies and advertising agencies to bite the interactive bullet.
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