The battle over the future of TV watching is being fueled by three primary factors:
1) sluggish advertising trends that are changing TV economics;
2) changing demographics; and
3) impact of technologies that shift control of the TV schedule away from media companies and to the consumer." (Researchandmarkets.com)
The annual TV advertising marketplace in America is in the neighborhood of $70 billion.
Advertising using Interactive TV - (iADs) - (May be known as i-ads, IADS, i-ADs, Targeted Interactive TV Advertising, Long-form Interactive Video Advertising, Interactive TV Telescoping Ads, Telescoping Ads with Interactive TV, One-to-one Interactive TV Advertising, Red-button Interactive TV Advertising, Long-tail Interactive TV Advertising. Associated with Personalized Viewer-specific Content, Behavior-based Profiling, Addressable Advertising, Customized Advertising & Advertising Applications, Addressibility, "Speed Bumps", Addressable Advertising, Personalized TV Advertising, One-to-one Advertising, Personalized Advertising, Targeted Advertising, Interactive Advertising, Interactive Marketing.)
Commercials (and other advertisements) using Interactive Television typically offer isolated link areas (icons or text) which may be known as triggers, rollovers or hot spots. Customers with enabled TV systems have the option of viewing these enhancements along with the standard programming. Viewers can “click” on these links using a control device such as a remote control, keypad, mouse and/or wireless keyboard. Activation technologies include our fingers, (red button Interactive TV is an example,) interactive voice response (IVR) and the next generation "point and click" experience.
On-demand content is often associated with ads incorporating Interactive TV. Activation of a "link area" takes you to a longer advertisement about that product/service. This is called telescopic, long-form or long-tail advertising. Of course the viewer might be watching a program that offers a long-form ad but the people he/she's watching TV with don't also want to see that longer ad. He/she can instead save the ad (or link to the ad) in their TV system with a click of a button and easily view the ad later at his or her convenience.
Note, just because a TV ad is interactive doesn't automatically mean it's also targeted, though many are both.
TV advertisements incorporating interactivity give the network operator and advertiser a better idea of how many viewers are being impacted by the ad. During commercials viewers might leave the room, get on the phone, switch channels, etc. but if they interact with the ad it's clear that they saw the commercial (ad) and may well be interested.
Interactive, on-demand, long-form (telescoping) and targeted advertising could collectively become a billion dollar TV industry. Cable TV and IPTV providers in particular have big plans.
As a trend among DVR and Video on Demand users is to skip ads shown with programming, Interactive TV advertising (iADs) are seen as a counter to this revenue loss. In addition, interactive ads can get consumers more involved with programming if that's their wish. Getting consumers to watch iADs is becoming more pressing as DVRs and on-demand programming use increases. According to Jupiter Research, nearly half of U.S. households are expected to have DVR capacity by 2010. (2010 DVR installations are expected to increase to 55 million households from 7 million in 2005.)
|
