Making money is most often a driving force in industry and interactive television (ITV) is no different. One of the main ways of making money in the ITV world is from interactive advertising.
In the past, and currently, the primary impact of television advertising has been to help an entity present themselves and their message to the hopefully complacent masses. The hope is that buyers will notice their television presence and that will help increase sales. In business terms, this is the ‘pull’ side of ‘push/pull�’ marketing (as the company's non-interactive television commercial “pulls� {hopefully} the customer to their product}. The “push� side is when businesses actively go out and “push� customers to actively access additional information about their products. ITV marketing excels in actively looking for, finding and satisfying customers. Thus, marketing using Interactive Television is most often oriented toward “push� activities. Importantly, advertising using ITV offers more opportunity for the customer to not only find out immediately more about a product, but ITV advertising offers a way for them to buy it right then and there and quite conveniently, something that will undoubtedly change the way traditional advertising works.
ITV advertising most often takes the form of television commercials offering isolated link areas (sometimes known as Triggers, Rollovers or Hot Spots) that are viewed along with, and literally over, the TV program. Viewers can click on these links using a control device such as a remote control, mouse or keyboard, and experience more of the commercial than those who see the commercial without these enhancements. An example is when a commercial is aired and a link to the advertiser's Web site is presented as part of the commercial, the viewer could then immediately click on the link and go to the advertiser’s webpage. Viewers of that same advertisement, who do not have ITV capacity, would in fact not see those link areas.
An issue concerning many advertisers when it comes to interactive television, TiVo in particular, is the fact that it will give viewers the option to simply not watch the ad’s aired on television all together. With TiVo for example, users can request TiVo to record all their favourite shows minus the ads- Obviously a big concern to the advertiser. Another concern arrises with viewing times. Many company’s advertise in specific time slots. For example a fast food chain may wish to advertise at meal times. In the hope that family’s will see these ad’s and make the decision to eat out that night. But what happens when the family decides to use their TiVo to record the chosen program in which the ad was put and watch the programme later that night? The ad will surely loose its effect- in this example the family would have already eaten.
The future of television and the advertising industry will undoubtedly be an exciting one- One that will be interesting to follow through its changes.
Peter Hawkins 01:50, 29 Oct 2004 (EST)
