Targeting has been widely heralded as the salvation for TV advertising by improving efficiency and response rates, but Tess Alps, CEO of Thinkbox, marketing arm of the major UK commercial broadcasters such as ITV and Channel 4, will have none of it. “I think targeting is being massively overplayed. People talk about Internet advertising being very targeted, but it isn’t and the thing that actually makes it valuable is that it is transactional.” By this Alps means that Internet ads are typically designed to attract as many people as possible, but then with the ability to click through different options and drill down to find a product or service that matches the needs of the individual surfer. Alps  argues that interactive TV advertising should work the same way, starting off with a generic ad that will interest the largest number of people possible, although  by all means matched to the content currently being watched, and then offering the option of clicking through to other ads within a nested network, ending up perhaps with a short feature of a particular product or service.

There’s a “gold rush” to put video content onto multiple screens ranging from televisions (of course!) to PCs to mobile phones with assorted other devices in between. As with any gold rush, some will strike it rich and others will go bust because things just don’t pan out.

One thing is certain: there’s a public hunger for content, and people will go to any available screen to watch what they want. I see it on the freeway — distracted drivers out there playing with their handheld devices when they should be looking at traffic. (It’s why I try to take the train to work.)

Internet advertising weathered the recession and grew by 4.6% to £1,752.1m despite the entire advertising industry sector contracting by 16.6% during the same period. This trend is not just occurring in the UK; it’s more or less being mirrored in the US and throughout Europe. So what can TV do about it?

VOD, once billed as the evil killer of TV advertising as we have known it, could end up being its salvation. It may be partly that, as some surveys have suggested, when push comes to shove a majority of consumers would rather sit through commercials than pay up front for their viewing, but the growing momentum behind VOD advertising also reflects new opportunities enabled by interactivity. IPTV and cable operators are keen to exploit their return channels to provide not just appealing services but also equally compelling propositions for advertisers that their satellite competitors cannot match. Interactivity is the one big card cable and IPTV operators still hold but they must move fast to exploit this window of opportunity before it closes. Advertising is now seen as a key component of this strategy, not just because of its potential to create new revenue but also to repel the ever growing threat on this front from Over the Top services and from the Internet in general.