“VoD should target direct marketing revenues”

At the IPTV World Forum event in Olympia yesterday, the panel discussion confirmed that standards and metrics were further barriers to growth currently for video-on-demand.

Nigel Walley, CEO of Decipher, said that it was absurd to use TV metrics to measure TV VoD as it was an entirely different experience.

He felt that VoD could target new broadcast money, rather than take a slice of existing TV budgets – principally from direct marketing.

Thomas Curwen, CEO of Kill Marketing agreed, and pointed to the opportunities for innovation if direct marketing metrics were employed – “A/B testing could be done… it’s a much more exciting proposition for agencies,” he said.

Curwen cautioned against any use of CTRs in this market, describing it as an “obsession”. You should “measure what’s changed in someone’s head,” he said.

Walley felt that the free-to-air companies needed to look to start pay services (see C4 app announcement today).

All parties accepted that a lack of standards (around ad formats as well as metrics) would hold the medium back, but there was no firm proposition as to who might lead the standardisation.

However, David Brennan, research and strategy director at Thinkbox, believes that media agencies have the incentive to press for this.

Curwen cited Publicis having driven standards online, but felt that in general agencies and clients were sadly well behind the consumers when it came to understanding these new digital opportunities.