‘Current EPG offerings have a long way to go’

“Advertisers are being woefully let down by EPG offerings,” says Oli Newton, head of emerging platforms at Starcom Mediavest Group.

Speaking at MediaTel’s Media Playground 2011 event last week, Newton (pictured) complained that current EPG offerings are a long way behind the US, though he praised companies “like Rovi for starting to make it better”.

Dara Nasr, head – YouTube & Display at Google, thinks the EPG experience is “very clunky” and as a result, doesn’t suit advertising. “Programme guides need to be more interactive, then advertising could be introduced… but it seems a long way off technologically,” he said.

Rovi’s heading of advertising Jeff Siegel agreed that EPG’s need to be more consumer friendly before introducing advertising, though he showed examples of advertising within guides in the US, and spoke of early stage conversations in the UK market.

“Smart TV will offer a new level of consumer experience [with the EPG],” he said. “Functionality is becoming so much more robust, and users will be able to search by genre, show, app and film etc. If you can embed advertising around that, it becomes very powerful.”

“EPGs have the potential to become the most powerful thing on your TV,” Newton agreed. “Brand (channel) loyalty is eroding… TV is simply a screen that allows consumers to get content now.”

Nigel Walley, CEO, Decipher, anticipates that the EPG will change because it needs to start including advertising and promotion. He pointed to the first campaigns on Virgin’s TiVo (via Starcom). Walley warned that the advertising industry “needs to make content compelling” in order to see success in this area.

In future, Dan Saunders, head of content services at Samsung, says we will see EPG’s becoming more intelligent, citing examples of fast forward and rewind capabilities, and being able to sync devices in your home to easily access content across multiple devices.