Personalised Interactive TV Advertising: The iMEDIA Business Model

Interactive TV, also referred to as iTV, combines the appeal and mass audience of traditional TV with the interactive nature of the Web. As such, it offers viewers an active entertainment experience and industry players new business opportunities to learn better about and serve their audience and prospective customers. Interactivity, in particular, implies a two-way communication between the viewer and the medium, allowing for unprecedented personalization of programming and services. In this paper we deal with the topic of advertising over digital interactive TV and describe a specific approach to the delivery of personalized interactive advertisement content to viewers based on their individual profiles. The emphasis is placed on the transformation of industry business models that the new technological developments imply. The main implication of iTV advertising is a whole new set of information and information flows among industry players that are introduced to take advantage of interactivity and personalization. We suggest that a new value chain and new market intermediaries will be needed to harness the new information flows, proposing an integrated industry business model for a future technological platform. A u t h o r s Katherine C. Pramataris ([email protected]) is PhD student at the Athens University of Economics & Business (AUEB), Greece. Her research is in the area of Electronic Retailing, focusing on the personalization of interactive advertising and electronic retail services. Prior to that, she has worked in the Management Systems Department of Procter & Gamble Headquarters Europe and the Marketing Department of Procter&Gamble Greece. Papakiriakopoulos A. Dimitris ([email protected]) is a PhD student at the Athens University of Economics & Business (AUEB), Greece. His research is into E-Business and especially deals with Virtual Organizations issues. George Lekakos ([email protected]) is a PhD student at the Athens University of Economics & Business, Greece. He is a member of the eLTRUN (Electronic Trading Research Unit), an e-commerce research group. He has been actively involved with a number of National and EC funded projects. His research interests include emerging business models and intermediation issues in the e-commerce framework. Nikolaos A. Mylonopoulos is Visiting Lecturer at the Athens University of Economics and Business and Project Manager at the eLTRUN research group. He holds a PhD in Industrial and Business Studies from Warwick Business School. He has had teaching and research appointments at Loughborough University, Warwick Business School, Birkbeck College (University of London) and the Athens Laboratory of Business Administration. INTRODUCTION As digital technology and consumer behaviour evolve, marketers can and need to continuously enhance the value of their digital marketing offering. The birth of the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1993, particularly its graphical user interface, offered marketers opportunities that were previously unimaginable (Poon and Jevons 1997). The WWW allows for advanced marketing activities and, moreover, for interactive marketing, as the user is actively involved in responding to the vendor’s promotion campaign. This kind of interactivity is not commonly found in marketing activities conducted through traditional broadcast and print media, with the exception of interactive television (Poon and Jevons 1997). One of the most important consequences of interactivity is that it opens up new opportunities for personalization. In traditional media the vendor, or advertiser, has to seek customer information elsewhere, from sources such as market research companies or direct consumer surveys in order to customize the service or advertisement. Moreover, it is difficult to ensure and to verify that the service or advertisement is correctly targeted to the intended customer groups. In interactive media, the customer identifies herself and often reveals her personal profile either by providing Personalized Interactive TV Advertising: The iMEDIA Business Model K. PRAMATARIS, D. PAPAKYRIAKOPOULOS, G. LEKAKOS AND N. MYLONOPOULOS Co py rig ht © 20 01 E le ct ro ni c M ar ke ts Vo lu m e 11 (1 ): 1– 9. w w w .e le ct ro ni cm ar ke ts .o rg Ke yw or ds : in te ra ct iv e TV , pe rs on al iz at io n, i nt er ac tiv e ad ve rt is em en t, iT V, b us in es s