The march of digital interactive TV and the emerging science of telegraphics
- PDF / 162,472 Bytes
- 7 Pages / 595 x 842 pts (A4) Page_size
- 44 Downloads / 139 Views
The march of digital interactive TV and the emerging science of telegraphics Neal Rimay-Muranyi Date received (in revised form): 9 August 1999
Abstract
Keywords: digital, interactive, television, targeting, consumer, profiling
Programme viewing gives an accurate picture of the interests and aspirations of the viewing household. With the advent of digital television, viewers’ programme-watching patterns can be tracked and analysed and the opportunity will be in place to build new targeting systems which go a stage further than today’s geodemographic, lifestyle or psychographic tools. This paper examines the significance of the development of digital television in the world of marketing and direct marketing, and will discuss how the datasets can be combined to provide a new super-powerful targeting system, building on today’s foundations, and applicable throughout the marketing mix.
Introduction
Neal Rimay-Muranyi, Director, The Database Group Ltd. Colston Tower, Colston Street, Bristol BS1 4UH UK Tel: +44 117 918 3500 Fax: +44 117 929 2950 E-mail: [email protected]
A most portentous event has just occurred at the time of writing this article. BSkyB has announced an offer to give away set-top boxes to new digital TV subscribers, a move which is costing the company some £315m and which has also necessitated a freeze on shareholder dividend payments for the foreseeable future. Its main rival, ONDigital, has launched a promotion offering free set-top boxes to subscribers who buy a £200 TV set. These initiatives, designed to remove financial hardware obstacles in the path of the potential digital TV audience, may well turn out to be the principle market opener for digital. In addition, interactive digital TV sets (which render the need for set-top boxes redundant and which make the new technology so interesting from a marketers point of view) will be hitting the shops at Christmas. Predicted pricing for these digital sets was £800 back in 1998, is now £500, and will probably be revised several times in the next few months. So it looks like digital TV and digital interactive are finally starting to get serious. These developments theoretically introduce a far wider range of content choice for the television-watching consumer, especially in the UK where the range of broadcast options has remained pitifully restricted when compared to the USA or even many continental European countries. This paucity of viewing choice in the UK will now inevitably change. Whether quality of programming will be maintained across these new broadcast outlets remains to be seen, along with the question mark over what regular viewing figures the proliferation of new channels will
© H E N R Y S T E W A R T P U B L I C A T I O N S 1 4 6 3 - 5 1 7 8 . I n t e r a c t i v e M a r k e t i n g . V O L . 1 N O . 2 PP 177-183. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 1 9 9 9
177
Rimay-Muranyi
Significance for advertising outlets
capture, not to mention the complexity of advertising rates versus market share/viewing that will be introduced. However, the fact t
Data Loading...
