ANALYSIS: Insights on interactive TV

A corner of England has been the first to taste interactive TV, in a BT

trial backed by key advertisers. Conor Dignam reports on the lessons

learnt

One of the world’s largest trials of interactive television comes to an

end in the suburbs of Ipswich and Colchester this month.

More than 5000 people in 2000 homes have been given a taste of the

television of the future. The year-long trial was funded by BT to help

assess whether people want interactive services via television, how they

will use them, and how much they’re prepared to pay.

The families selected formed a representative sample of the UK. By

giving every person in the household their own pin number to access the

system, BT was able to see exactly who was choosing what. Nine

interactive services were offered, including view-on-demand movies, home

banking and shopping, television programmes, video games, and a

children’s education service.

The first month of the trial and its installation was free, after which

charges were introduced. Movies and computer games proved to be two of

the most popular choices and cost up to pounds 3.99 to access.

The results are crucial to BT’s strategy of pushing into new markets.

They are also commercially sensitive. Viewers taking part were asked to

sign confidentiality agreements. However, one viewer told Marketing how

his family had made use of the service. His wife had bought children’s

clothing from the interactive high street when it held a January sale,

and his six-year-old daughter had become an enthusiastic user of the

education facility.

But because the family has Sky TV, he found the movies service too

expensive and largely redundant, as the films had already appeared on

satellite, or would shortly.

The ‘on-demand’ movies were far from instantaneous. ‘It doesn’t really

take long, perhaps a couple of minutes, but it seems like a long time

when you’re used to switching channels at the touch of a button.

‘The novelty wore off after a while, and it was certainly less used by

the end of the year. I think the only person in our household who will

seriously miss it when the trial ends is our daughter.’

Advertising in the trial was confined to one area, called Adland. Here

visitors could find interactive sites from 39 advertisers, including

Allied Domecq, Bass, PepsiCo, Norwich Union, Vauxhall, Levi’s and Tango.

Ring-fencing the interactive advertising was a controversial move from

the start. Advertisers felt their ads should be part of the general

programming, rather than a ghetto which viewers rarely visited.

Eyes on the prizes

But the Ipswich viewer says he and his family were regularly lured in by

competitions offering prizes. ‘BT was very interested in what we thought

of Adland. The consensus seemed to be that people would only go in if

they thought they’d get something out of it. Some of the ads never

changed and weren’t very interesting. Once you’d been into them you

didn’t go back.’

In contrast, BT maintains Adland was a success, with 90% of households

going into the site and 35% using it on a regular basis. The data shows

that average visits to Adland lasted for around 20 minutes, during which

viewers visited around three different ads. These figures will help to

calm industry fears that new-age television viewers will choose simply

to exclude advertising from their media mix.

However, some of the advertisers admit that it was an early and

imperfect effort at testing interactive ads. Sharon Carter, marketing

director of Hasbro, says the sports brand’s site had only around 30

interactive responses to the single and unchanging ad it ran.

‘We got a number of enquiries at the beginning of the promotion, but as

the novelty wore off the number of responses fell. We wouldn’t have

known that if we hadn’t tested it.’

Other advertisers who have stressed the interactive and changing nature

of their sites have had more success. Steve Delooze, who headed up

NatWest’s home banking trial on the high street, says it allowed the

bank’s customers to do almost all their banking from their home.

‘We had some people say that if it was a full-time service they would

change their bank to NatWest so they could use it.’ Once again, the

trial was a ‘significant investment’ for NatWest, and included having a

24-hour manned help desk to answer any enquiries from people using the

interactive service. Whether NatWest goes further depends on the results

of its research.

BT also wants time to assess the results before committing itself to

renewing or extending the trial. As long as the consumer remains at the

heart of the marketing push, BT believes interactive television has a

future.

Tim Patten, BT’s head of multi-media advertising services, says the

trial was conducted for the express purpose of gauging which services

would work and which ones were destined to fail.

‘The response has been very positive indeed,’ says Patten. ‘It wasn’t

just a test of television on- demand, but a whole range of services.’

Data riches

In return for its investment, BT now has a massive database of

information on how different socio-economic groups, ages and genders

will use the service. ‘People have certainly bought into it. It may not

replace existing television, but it’s something that’s going to have a

growing role,’ says Patten.

BT, the viewers of Ipswich and Colchester, and the advertisers have all

learnt from the trial. Patten says a further trial or roll-out of the

system would probably not repeat the experiment of having a separate

‘Adland’, and would integrate the ads with programming.

‘What was notable was that advertisers have to work harder in these

environments,’ says Patten. ‘The consumer has control and if advertisers

don’t give them something that’s entertaining or relevant then they are

going to lose them and they are not going to come back.’ That, for

advertisers, represents both the challenge and the danger of the new age

of television.

This article was first published on Marketing