Interactive TV ads enable a viewer to be able to click on an icon on the usual 30-second commercial spot for a variety of purposes. It's already the norm in England, and Canada is doing a lot of testing at this time, getting ready to roll them out as well. It looks like over the next several years the United States will be employing this strategy also.
“Television innovation does not move at Internet speed. But within the next three years, I think we are going to see widespread deployment of interactive advertising, and interactive programming on broadcast and cable networks,” said Tracey Scheppach, vp, video innovation director at Starcom USA.
Scheppach added that in the near future viewers will be able to use their remotes to vote on reality TV shows like "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars." I wonder how that mobile companies will respond seeing how much money they make on that process now?
Satellite TV provider EchoStar (DISH) is offering ads across the U.S., and other cable operators like Timer Warner (TWC), Cox and Cablevision (CVC) have been offering interactive ads in smaller markets to see how they do. At this time in the U.S. cable operators are more open to the idea than their network counterparts.
The reason why seems to be that even with interactive ads the networks consider them potential rivals. As one network marketing executive said: “Any tools that can spur a deeper level of viewer engagement is a good thing. As long as the interaction doesn’t take viewers away from the programming.”
I find it strange how strong the paranoia within the TV industry is still so strong. Here's something that will really work well, but they're afraid will take viewers to the marketers' platforms, who are paying for the programming in the first place; so they are dragging their heals in this area too.
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