ITV Media Experts, Vidéotron launch interactive advertising technology

Montreal-based ITV Media Experts and Vidéotron ltée have announced a new service offering to launch in the summer of 2005 that will bring long-form interactive advertising on an on-demand basis to the cableco’s digital TV customers at the press of a button. The system, similar in some ways to the now-defunct-in-Canada Wink system (CNM, Oct. 6/04), is being touted as a breakthrough technology for advertisers, broadcasters and distributors as they each seek to exploit digital TV platforms and mitigate negative trends towards personalized, advertising-free TV made possible by personal video recorders and other technologies. While an unnamed advertiser and Vidéotron are pressing forward with the offering, called etc.tv, experts caution that its success will depend on the participation of broadcasters - a group that has traditionally been aggressive in seeking a share of the ITV revenue pie. The etc.tv system will work by displaying an icon to viewers during commercials. By using the select button on their remote controls, they’ll bring up additional content related to that advertisement on demand, streamed from Vidéotron’s video servers. The content might be a short film featuring a product - as BMW used successfully by hiring Guy Ritchie to produce a number of long-form ads - or other types of long-form advertising. Media Experts executive Ian McLean says consumers have been conditioned by years of Internet browsing to search for information relating to products and services, and to seek it on an on-demand basis. ITV applications such as Wink have fallen short as an advertising medium, he says, since they are grounded in alpha-numeric text, which consumers don’t necessarily want to see on their televisions. "The difference in this model is that what you’re linking to is more television. I think that while Wink was an important evolutionary step in interactive television advertising, I think to many in the advertising industry, creatives in particular, and to the consumer, (Wink) was underwhelming because what you were pulling up was much more Internet-based content. It was alpha-numeric text and banners and layovers, and we think that those types of advertising applications don’t really belong on television. What people want to watch on television is television. Not the Internet. We think that putting the Internet on television is like making toast in your oven," McLean tells Canadian NEW MEDIA. The system was developed in-house at ITV Media Experts, and the firm expects to sell it as a turnkey product to cablecos. McLean says Media Experts is in discussions with several companies beside Vidéotron, and considers the offering an attractive one based on its simple implementation. "In order for this to work, I think we have to bring a solution that is turnkey, that is a low-risk and low-cost proposition to all the players. They’re all busy with their core businesses. We’ve sourced all of our technology. We developed this application. We bring it to them in a turnkey fashion. What we ask of them is their cooperation, the cooperation of their infrastructure and cooperation of their engineering staff through the quality assurance stage and testing phase and implementing it. We’re not asking them to do anything outside of their normal operations. Nor would we ask the broadcaster to. The broadcaster carries on doing business tomorrow in the same fashion as they did today. We handle the technology. We make it advertiser and agency friendly, and we take care of all the development." While the system is being touted as a win-win-win for the various parties, observers note that the announcement of a trial with Vidéotron has been made without a broadcast partner. Cablecos and broadcasters have clashed in past about ITV issues, notably in a process now languishing at the CRTC about regulatory models for the technology (CNM, April 3/03 & Feb. 20/03). While regulation won’t play a role in developing Media Experts’ business model, securing broadcasters a fair share of the pie will be critical to the system’s success. Mario Mota, VP of broadcast/media at Decima Research Inc. (an affiliate company of Decima Reports), notes that cablecos will be looking for a way to recoup their capital investment in ubiquitous digital networks, and that etc.tv will play a role in that. Broadcasters, he says, will likely have to be on board with that goal if the system is to be viable. "Clearly, (broadcasters have) never been very pleased to have cable share in advertising revenues in any way, and there’s a battle going on with regards to the U.S. avails on the specialty channels. But, in this particular case, it’s a partnership. They don’t have access to that. They don’t own that on-demand platform. It’s not theirs. They haven’t invested $6 billion like the cable industry in Canada has to build out digital networks, to be able to offer these types of services. Quite frankly, the cable companies deserve to recoup some of that investment. They’re doing that with some of the services they’re offering, and if they can do that with new applications like advertising, then I think all the more power to them…Broadcasters can’t sit by and continue to do what they’re doing because the technology is allowing consumers to hit that skip button on their PVR and be able to seek what they want when they want it with time-shifting. They have to embrace it. They have to adapt and they have to work to try to do something a little bit differently here to reach those hard-to-reach people. And, they’ll do that with advertisers and I think this is certainly an interesting, innovative development."

ITV Media Experts, Vidéotron launch interactive advertising technology

Broadcast | November 16, 2004

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