Interactive Advertising Revenue Slipping Away

But perhaps more important is that the ad campaign reporting structure for interactive advertising is far better. Taylor said it can take as much as six months from the initial concept of a campaign to get it developed, then delivered, then finally analyzed for effectiveness. Interactive advertising results often are available in days and sometimes instantaneously.

The perceived battle between cable providers and IPTV providers might not be over, but the real battle lines should be drawn between these two types of providers (including satellite) and ISPs, Taylor said.

Much progress is being made as standards such as tru2way advance in the cable industry, and the February 2009 transition to digital cable concludes, and as IPTV providers perfect their on-demand and recording capabilities. But advertisers still are looking at the numbers and the numbers favor the Internet. And without the numbers, it might not make sense for cable MSOs to invest in telescoping technology, a tool required by all serious interactive advertising agencies.

Telescoping is a non-linear experience in which viewers click on content and are taken away from the programming. As it is used in the UK, it allows users to pause their programming and follow a link to retrieve more information from an advertisement. If cable and IPTV providers can’t reach more than 50 percent of U.S. households, advertisers might not be interested in the telescoping feature.

Taylor suggests that cable companies take the telescoping option off the table and stick to what they can deliver such as targeted advertising through on-demand programming. He also said cable MSOs and IPTV providers should work more closely together and take advantage of standard ad formats such as those being developed in Project Canoe.

Without common standards, the different platforms used by cable companies vs. IPTV companies – and the difference between platform in each space, such as Verizon and AT&T – makes it too complex for advertisers to deal with, Taylor said.

“If I am an advertiser and have to go to Verizon to run an ad on its FiOS network, I don’t want to have to develop a completely new ad unit to run with AT&T,” Taylor said.

The other significant advantage the cable and IPTV providers are letting slip away is ownership of the customer. Taylor said they are a decade away from having the down-to-the-set-top-box kind of addressability people are talking about today.