PAY TV platforms Austar and Optus are using interactivity as a way to differentiate themselves from their rivals and give advertisers extra leverage for their brands and products.
Austar has rolled out a range of interactive services including t-mail, games, interactive advertising and shopping, in a bid to boost subscriptions and increase the pay provider’s “stickiness” with customers.
For the stations, interactivity provides an extra string to their bow and a way to augment viewer loyalty to the network and the products and brands being advertised.
XYZ Entertainment, owner and distributor of Arena, Channel [V], Lifestyle, Music Max, Discovery Channel and Nickelodeon, has been successfully incorporating interactivity into its content with pleasing results.
XYZ chief executive officer Patrick Delany sees interactivity as the way pay TV can boost its offering to advertisers and marketers.
“Once you get into this area it’s dynamite; it’s dynamite for brand-building. We’re really excited that [interactivity] is another extension with which to build a brand,” Delany said.
“Our philosophy is that brands are king. [Nine Network’s] David Leckie can’t say that. The guys over at Seven can’t say that because they don’t have the opportunity we have,” he said.
“It is a great opportunity for us to build a brand that will go beyond television. The other philosophy is that we must find viruses that spread these brands.”
Delany said the most popular program on Channel [V] was By Demand, a live request show that is programmed by the faxes, emails and SMS messages sent by viewers. The station’s SMS reminder service Rover, which prompts viewers via their mobile phones when their favourite artist will be on air, currently has 50,000 subscribers.
“Why interactivity has a future, in our view, is because audiences already crave involvement and interactivity delivers that,” he said.
Simple interactions with the overlays do not need a phone line connection unless information is being sent by the viewer, such as competition entries or credit card purchases. During simple interactions, the information is cached down to the set-top box.
“It’s contextual entertainment. We already have clubs and things like that on our Web sites. We’d like to make them part of our overlays,” Delany said. He said newsletters, mail and news were obvious applications.
Pay provider Optus will next month launch a campaign for Mastercard that ties the interactive TVC to a Web site.
During a broadcast an icon will appear on the Mastercard TVC, which will allow viewers to be taken through to the Mastercard promotional site, where they can then register for a prize draw.
Opt us marketing director consumer and multimedia Martin Dalgleish said about 1000 trial households will see the campaign, which will run from October 15 to 31.
“The key feature of our campaign with Mastercard is a trigger advertising capability coupled with a return path. This powerful combination allows immediate and direct response to the campaign,” Dalgleish said.
