Interactive Television Provides Opportunities For Advertisers
As a growing number of advertisers question the effectiveness of the traditional advertising model, many are increasing their commitment to the challenges of interactive television advertising, according to interactive consultancy, Brightline Partners.
Many advertisers are finding creative ways to offset the challenges of this relatively new market, in order to minimise the cost of campaigns and maximise the ad quality. According to the Brightline report, viewers are moving slowly towards on-demand TV rather than live programming, this is putting increased pressure on the traditional advertising model.
Although subscription numbers are increasing, challenges such as reach, scale, measurement and pricing still need to be overcome.
Over 43 million homes are now subscribed to either digital or satellite television services in the US and this is expected to grow to 46 million by the end of 2004. In the UK the number of multi-channel homes has reached 31 million, according to the UK communications regulator, Ofcom.
Subscribers have access to hundreds of channels and on-demand services, 13 million US cable subscribers already have video-on-demand and this is expected to rise to 18 million by the end of this year.
In the autumn, TiVo, the digital video recorder manufacturer, will unveil new web-like interactive advertisements for television. This may help to ease nervous advertisers because one of the features of TiVo is that viewers can skip commercials.
The company hope advertisers will warm to its latest experiment, known as video-to-video. This lets viewers click a button on their remote control and watch a 3 minute video describing products that might appeal to them. The marketing clips are promoted through small icons that appear on the TV screen as viewers fast-forward past regular ads.
Advertisers are finding benefits of iTV advertising elsewhere and ironically, the lack of a single iTV platform across programmers and operators can work to their advantage. This can lead to flexibility in iTV buying decisions and campaigns can be customised on individual platforms and/or combine complementary applications on multiple platforms. Consequently, advertisers are inspired to think more broadly about the objectives of an iTV campaign rather than build or adapt to one specific platform says Brightline.
The report highlights that a growing subset of top-tier advertisers have discovered that staying well-abreast of advanced changes in programmes and operators help them to strike better deals.
Most advertisers are still using single iTV approaches on individual platforms but the more experienced planners are deploying campaigns across a variety of on-demand platforms such as; TiVo, Cox FreeZone and Comcast’s Marketplace.
Over the next 12-18 months, marketers most actively participating in the iTV ad market will provide critical input to establishing the ultimate rules for the game says Brightline Partners.
Brightline Partners: 212 209 3990 www.blp-ny.com
Recent Television Stories from NewsLine European Pay-TV Revenues To Exceed Adspend In 2004 Channel 4 To Profit From Sex And The City Climax UK Viewers Call For Change In Way BBC Is Funded
Subscribers can access ten years of media news and analysis in the Archive