Poor returns from walled-garden interactive television (iTV) are disappointing the UK’s finance firms that have used the platform to deliver their services to consumers, according to Big Banks Dominate iDTV – a new report from Forrester Research.
The report forecasts that the number of iTV users will grow from the current 11 million adults to more than 21 million by 2004; of these TV banking will only reach 2.2 million, or 10.5%.
“Britain’s consumers need several more years of watching enhanced TV programmes, playing TV games and responding to broadcast ads before they get used to banking or applying for financial products through the TV,” says senior analysts Benjamin Ensor.
A recent Insight Analysis report highlighted the problems currently facing iTV services, particularly the walled-garden approach to television retail, or t-commerce (see Insight Analysis: The Struggle For Interactive Television). In relation to iTV banking, Forrester advises that firms should use interactive advertising to generate consumer interest, but warns that only the UK’s biggest banks have the reach and financial resource to make this successful.
iTV’s limitations Forrester says that the limitations of iTV in conveying large volumes of complex information mean that it should be used in a way that is complementary to postal communications and bank branches. The report says that iTV should be used for what TV is best for – building awareness. Building pages that emulate websites, for users without a PC, is not a sensible approach, the research company warns.
