Sky Media:Planning an Interactive TV Advertising Campaign

Robert Leach at Sky Media, describes the key points to remember when planning an Interactive Advertising campaign.

In the beginning…
The best iTV ads tend to be those that are considered at campaign conception.

Time
An iTV campaign can take from 3 to 8 weeks to get from brief to broadcast. This allows for research, set up, design, build, test and launch of an interactive campaign to air.

Define Your Success Criteria
Define the objectives and the success criteria for the campaign.

Is It About Response Or Branding?
Do you want a response gathering exercise or an immersive brand experience.

Think About Research
Research all relevant aspects pre and post-campaign so that you can quantify success and therefore your return on investment.

Bandwidth
Currently only Sky Interactive and Zip Tv provide the bandwidth necessary to house the interactive area that sits behind the red button. Sky Interactive have a slightly wider range of products that are endorsed by all the interactive airtime sales houses. These areas can be accessed permanently from other interactive areas, such as Sky Active. Zip TV tend to provide only the higher end sites which are accessible from all the channels except ITV and Sky Active.

Data
If you are planning a response based campaign you may need to consider where the data will come from. iTV applications hosted on Sky Interactive bandwidth take the name and address details of interactors directly from the sky subscriber database.  Zip TV use slightly different technology requiring name and postcode entry by the viewer.

Choose The Appropriate Product
Decide on the appropriate interactive product to base your iTV Advert on; Impulse Response, Mini-DAL or DAL and maximise reach by using all relevant broadcasters and sign off budgets.

Decide Which Agency Takes Control
Involve all agencies (Creative, Media, Planning, DM, and Digital) and decide who has the best skills to take control to be project manager. Make it clear where the ownership lies for managing the process and getting the campaign to air

Creative Continuity
Build the interactive mechanic so that it has creative continuity and plays off the TV assets. Interactive creative is usually devised by an iTV designer at the TV creative agency or an Interactive specialist.

Remember It’s TV
Whatever product you choose interactive advertising should embrace the core attributes of the television medium and be entertaining, informative and play on the convenience and immediacy of television.

Say It How It Is
Remember that the initial call to action is very important and that misleading the viewer can be damaging to the brand

For more information please visit http://www.skymedia.co.uk