part story on interactive television (ITV), here’s a rundown of several key industry players, starting with Wink Communications:
ALAMEDA, Calif.-Looking to entice TV viewers to the interactive experience through low-cost, unobtrusive and easy-to-use systems, Alameda-based Wink Communications has focused on forming alliances with equipment and platform manufacturers, broadcasters, cable operators and advertisers. These include Microsoft (which invested $30 million to take a 10 percent share in Wink last year), Liberate, General Instrument, Toshiba and Source Media; and such cable and broadcast networks as ABC, NBC, FOX, CNN, ESPN, HBO, TNT and Showtime. Wink has been working for top national advertisers including Disney, Honda, Ford, General Electric, Kraft, Unilever, Paramount Pictures and Levis, and claims to have aired 1000 Wink-enhanced ads in the last quarter of ’99.
Wink is currently accessible to households whose local cable operator has signed up with Wink, or to homes that have a Wink-enabled television set manufactured by a Wink partner. By clicking on a small Wink icon on the screen, viewers can use their remote control to perform functions such as respond to free offers, buy products, get sports scores and updated weather, and participate in games while continuing to watch the program. Wink is primarily adding enhancements to existing creative. Recent examples include a Ford commercial which gives viewers the option of registering their interests so they can be contacted by a local dealer; and a Clorox spot where viewers can request and receive via mail a $1 discount coupon toward the purchase of the bleach. Viewers can also click on a music video and instantly place an order to buy that video.
Allan Thygesen, Wink’s executive VP/sales and business development, predicted that ITV will start with narrowband, shift to broadband cable, and then to two-way satellite. "What everyone wants to demonstrate is how impressive it all looks on broadband, but we don’t have this in the home yet. The questions are: Does it work on the platforms we have today? Is it just remote control-based, or is it basic or keyboard?
What are the costs? Is it free to the consumer? How do you deal with the gatekeepers?"
San Francisco-based RespondTV offers services similar to those of Wink. RespondTV has facilitated enhanced spots for Ford, Domino’s Pizza, Bloomberg Television, Condenet’s Epicurious.com, and 1-800-FLOWERS, among others (SHOOT, 3/10, p. 1). RespondTV is currently available in some 500,000 to 600,000 households with Internet-based TV set top boxes. But that total figures to increase dramatically on the strength of a multi-year deal finalized last week whereby RespondTV will deliver enhanced TV infrastructure and services to Tribune Broadcasting’s 22 major market television stations across the country. The agreement will enable households with open standards-based set top boxes to receive enhanced programming and commercials on Tribune stations, including national superstation WGN-TV, Chicago.
At the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention last month in Las Vegas, RespondTV teamed with New York-based Chyron; ViziWorx, Marina del Rey, Calif., and Atlanta-based Weather Channel to demonstrate what it calls "the next wave of viewer enhancements for Interactive TV." The four companies provide a unified way to create, encode, display and retrieve real-time, on-air graphics and advertising for both traditional and enhanced delivery to viewers.
Arthur Cohen, senior VP/advertising and e-commerce at New York-based ACTV, which has offices in Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston, said the Internet has exposed one of the great weaknesses of television-its inability to target advertising at the right customer. The company made several announcements at NAB-developments it claims would put it at the forefront of ITV with two key patented software-based technologies, HyperTV and Individualized TV.
HyperTV enhances standard TV content through the Internet, allowing for the delivery of interactive Web fare, Web-based advertising and e-commerce and community chat features that are synchronized to live or pre-recorded TV programs. Users can download free software from the official HyperLink Web site and need to have an Internet-connected computer and TV set in the same room. (According to Garner Research, about 27 million U.S. households have their PC and TV in the same room).
But Individualized TV, said Cohen, is where it starts to get exciting. It allows TV programmers and advertisers to deliver individually-tailored, targeted programming via digital cable, digital broadcast or digital satellite television to households. It can be used to enhance sports, music, pay-per-view, news, game shows, educational programming and advertising. The software remembers viewer commands and responses to onscreen prompts. The viewer needs a standard digital set top box with ACTV’s software download. So far, the company has made arrangements to integrate the software into digital set top boxes produced by Motorola (formerly General Instrument), Scientific-Atlanta and Pioneer Digital Technologies. The ACTV subsidiary Digital ADCO has launched a company called SpotOn, which is designed to drive ITV into ad agencies. According to Cohen, "We can offer advertisers pinpoint accuracy and maximum effectiveness when delivering commercials, based on the general demographic profile of a region, or on the specific profile on an individual household generated by ACTV’s software within the digital set top in the home."
Benefits include allowing advertisers to target messages to each addressable digital set top terminal. New York-headquartered company The Media Edge, which handles the global media planning and buying activities of Young & Rubicam (in addition to serving independent clients), has signed with ACTV to develop a charter program by the end of the year for experimentation with ITV among the The Media Edge’s clients.
And last week, ACTV announced it has entered into a strategic alliance with Nielsen Media Research. The two companies will work to develop software metering systems to accurately measure audience levels and uncover other data related to ITV.
"While targeted advertising on television is the holy grail of advertising, along with it comes a creative process. The creatives need to work with the media buyers to do a better job in marketing client products to TV, and eventually creating interactive advertising specially designed to have depth of creative and information," said Cohen.
But ACTV’s growth depends on an increase of set top box penetration. Cohen predicted that this will occur around 2005. "At the forefront of this technology will be considered purchase items such as automobiles. I’ve had interest from packaged goods companies already. It’s just at the point where it is getting serious; advertisers are taking notice. But it all depends on digital, which allows for things to happen," he said.
"Everyone’s minds will be on interactive by the end of the year. It will be a hot topic. By 2001, there will be enough boxes in homes to do tests," Cohen concluded.
