It's time that smaller companies began to benefit from advances in addressable and personalised advertising. says Doug Jones of BigBand Networks (pictured). He has written this interesting opinion piece on how small businesses can now, even at a local level, justify the cost of making TV commercials for delivery over IPTV networks.
"Addressable advertising is arguably the ‘hottest’ service that today’s new breed of Internet Protocol television (IPTV) operators have at their disposal. This offering will be key in enabling IPTV service providers to generate incremental revenue streams as they ramp up subscriber numbers, the ability to send commercials to specific groups of viewers also offers opportunities for advertisers.
We are not just talking about large enterprises with big budgets here. The emergence of addressable advertising over IPTV networks means that small-to-medium-sized businesses generating niche content - from legal practices to luxury good manufacturers – can for the first time reach specific regions, zones, demographics or even individual viewers with tailored messages.
Decisions can be made on which adverts to send to which groups based on anonymised demographic information or user behaviour, such as television viewing history or user ‘opt in’ offerings where subscribers voluntarily provide information about the kind of advertising that they are interested in.
Other technologies are now coming on stream, which provide an additional incentive for small locally-based businesses to advertise on television. With the growing simplicity of web technologies like HTML, the emergence of high definition camcorder devices and the enhanced bandwidth and processing speeds now available on office PCs, small businesses often have the appropriate tools and resources to create the advertisements in-house using off-the-shelf footage.
As technology advances, generating ads will become ever easier. Already, it is possible to create ads cost-effectively and quickly and arrange for them to be rapidly placed within television programming schedules.
Addressability is not a new concept and businesses worldwide are already using information about a consumer’s interests to target them through the mail or at the point-of-sale. What is new for small local businesses is the ability to tailor television adverts to audiences, using IPTV networks as a conduit. In doing this, companies need to be aware of the legal issues and public concerns. However, if they can handle these correctly, addressable advertising could prove to be an extremely lucrative new revenue stream."