Xtreme interactivity spells drool & dread

MUMBAI: Couch potatoes, time is approaching when you’ll be leaning both backward and forward. You’ll be watching television in its new-age, digital, interactive avatar-a la DTH (direct-to-home) or CAS (conditional access system) or IPTV (Internet protocol TV).

It’s IPTV though that will double-click a crossover experience of viewing and net surfing. First generation IPTV is hardly pie in the sky. Full-blown rollouts are expected from telecom operators such as MSNL, Bharti BSNL, and corporate bigwigs like Reliance and Tata Teleservices within two years.

Compelling ad drivers

To clear the confusion, IPTV is not about viewing movies on your computer. It’s about delivering high-quality, multi-channel television and streamed or downloadable video to your television, and even mobile devices, PC. Video signals are received via the internet using a set-top box.

Give IPTV a two-to-three-year window for meaningful offtake, especially from the advertising perspective. “No where in the world are all these technologies coming in at the same time. IPTV will move concurrently with DTH, CAS, etc. DTH is a broadcast technology and offers a more limited choice and interactivity, while IPTV offers ‘Extreme Interactivity’,” says Rajesh Sawhney, president, Reliance Entertainment, who foresees exponential growth once the early year glitches are sorted out.  He ticks two compelling drivers: 

• IPTV is about interactive TV, about giving to consumers unlimited choice and every channel of the world. IF DTH is about say 150 channels, this could be hundred thousand.
  
• Second, there’s so much more you can do with the choice — there’s so much more control in the viewer’s hands.

Menu as medium

It’s a mixed-bag ad impact. “This service is delivered to the home across broadband to a set-top box and the TV services are accessed via the TV itself, not a PC. Your set-top box acts as a web browser with your TV as the monitor and programmes are searched by customised guides,’’ writes freelance journalist, Frances Reader, in a paper on the topic. Any TV home with a telephone connection can access IPTV.

Yes, this broadband platform is about “Xtreme Interactivity.” As it graduates, every inch of footage-ads or programming can be clicked on and will be response-driven. Dear viewer, that will put you in the driver’s seat: you’ll be able to choose from an infinite menu of world movies and programmes, and from services such as video on demand, at your time and place. You’ll be able to pull ad or programme information specific to your needs, for a totally unique viewing experience, or watch ad-less channels or even zap ads.

You can even have your own personal menu of channels that you want to watch for that week or month etc. “Many of these new forms have the menu (the EPG or electronic programme guide) as a core consumer tool of viewing planning. The EPG alone will change the way consumers switch channels. If they want to go from channel A to channel B, they will go directly from the menu, instead of sequentially going through several in-between channels as they do today. So, the EPG will emerge as an advertising option,’’ reckons Ravi Kiran, CEO, Starcom MediaVest Group.

Interesting conundrum

With its window-in-window viewing leeway, IPTV will present an interesting conundrum for advertising. It will start to break down the traditional 30-second TV spot, writes Reader. So one viewer may pull specific information on the product, another viewer may view retail or contest offers, while another would prefer to see how the ad was actually made or perhaps choose a view of a ‘humorous’ format of the same ad. In this twist of media fragmentation, none of these people will be watching the same ad. That’s assuming that the ad hasn’t been recorded out by then, in toto. Now you know why IPTV will throw challenges and opportunity to ad men.

Splintering media audiences and niche programming parley to an opportunity to create very tightly targeted, personalised ad creative, served on the fly to particular viewing community linked by interests or demographics. Listen to Prasanth Mohanachandran, vice president-digital, OgilvyOne Worldwide, Mumbai: Once these two-way addressable digital systems are in place and activated, advertisements can be tailormade to elicit a response directly through the system, based on the campaign objective. Eg: If you are watching IndianIdol, you can select your candidate while he/she is singing, via the remote. You could also view the details of the singer in a split screen.

More addressable, more services

For advertisers and broadcasters, IPTV offers more addressability than DTH, say media analysts. Its net-based Protocol will let one know who’s watching what, and when-which could put the need for peoplemeter services on back burner, they add.

In terms of services like shopping, again, IPTV viewers can not only pull in specific product information etc, but actually buy via net-based payment gateways, says Sawhney. While in DTH you would still be ordering via the phone.

Again for Video on Demand, choice would be infinite and from any operator. For example, you could get into Amazon and choose from their entire list of movies. VOD is extreme nicheing and advertisers will be able to target these niche audiences with customised messages and specialist services. In fact, it could effect release windows for feature films, presage media pundits.

Cautions a leading media specialist “The crunch for IPTV will be getting good local content tand being able to swing content arrangements with players like Star. Local content is what will determine true success,” says a leading media specialist.

Time and place shifting

IPTV permits ‘time-shifting’-a prospect that fills viewers with delight and advertisers and agencies with dread.

The first phase of TIVO and PVR (personal video recorder) technologies-where you can record programmes without the ad and play them later-was too expensive.

The second phase will permit storage on the server or operator side, so you can pause the programme, and return to view the rest seamlessly-as you would when surfing the net, say the IPTV side. Adds Mohanachandran: with time-shifting, the role of in-programme advertisements becomes more prominent. In this milieu, it becomes even more important to engage the audience through an interactive engagement rather than a one-way 30 seconder.

Such star-trekking technology will make it easier to ‘place shift’. Heard of the Slingbox? “It sits on top of your television, takes in video feeds from cable or satellite set-top boxes, DVD players and PVRs, and then retransmits a video stream via a broadband internet connection to wherever you happen to be,’’ runs a paper on the topic. 24X7 TV, whenever, wherever.