The Home Office has managed to make something watchable with the Beat: Life on the Streets series. But then, I suppose, that you’d run into problems of which channel to run it on.

The rules governing broadcast TV advertising and promotion are extremely rigorous. TV companies can only use promotional time for messages that relate to the audience as viewers. Advertising time must be sold to any company at a fair market rate, including to Thinkbox, despite them owning us. So we would not be allowed to have free, or even discounted, airtime. And because the TV market has a fixed supply (of minutes) any advertising by a TV company owned subsidiary is open to the accusation from ISBA and the IPA of hardening the market, unless there is a clear market imperative for them to use TV. Mind you, with TV prices at 1992 levels it might be considered a bit churlish if they did so! There are other very cost-effective ways of using TV, such as sponsorship, but whatever route we chose we would of course have to operate transparently and squeakily-cleanly.

Then there is the small matter of the large slice of the ad budget that the government would take in the forms of various taxes and levies – unique to TV advertising – in the process. And, as the marketing body for commercial TV, it would be a bit embarrassing if we didn’t lead by example with fantastic creative work.

None of the above totally precludes us from advertising on broadcast TV, but the case would need to be very robust and it would be very complicated to resolve. Then again, we do like a challenge…

However, we do use televisual communication whenever and wherever possible. You’ll see that our website is full of TV content and we also make TV ‘programmes’ that we distribute on DVD. So, we like to think we are using the newer TV platforms in engaging ways, if that doesn’t sound too weaselly!

On the subject of long form.. what about long form mashups…. now that would be interesting…. jaws to mozart, coronation street to barry white with bits of an advertisement coming in and out of focus to get attention. Getting attention is the new imperative…. !! !!

Only the new will get the attention…..

At Thinkbox we talk about the ‘convergence’ sandwich’ because there are always 3 layers: the distribution technology (broadcasting, broadband, DVD, mobile) the hardware (TV sets, PCs, iPhones, Wiis etc etc) and the really important stuff which is the content. That’s what defines TV in our opinion. So watching Sky News on your mobile phone at the bus-stop would definitely be considered TV by consumers, but I don’t think that video without sound would be. Moving escalator panels or online video windows don’t, I think, make it over the line; no sound (or rarely) is one major reason but it’s also the levels of engagement and attention, which are extremely peripheral in those instances.

YouTube is really interesting. We put it on the TV side of the line, but viewers switch between calling it TV and video, depending on the length of the content and whether it’s amateur/UGC or professional in origin.

@Simon Marquis. Hello Simon, how lovely to see you here. Rest assured, targeted, addressable advertising, be it via IPTV or web TV services, will definitely be touched on, though we’ve only got half a day. We’re interested to understand exactly how much advertisers want this. Packet Vision are clearly leaders in this field. Maybe we should organise one of our lower-key events around the topic at a later date and get you involved…

So, is a video displayed on a bus shelter side defined as TV or an adshell?

But I’d just like to point out that so far there’s no sign that on-demand services are substitutions for linear TV. In fact, this year we’ve had some of the highest broadcast viewing for 15 years, and there’s some early evidence that being able to catch-up easily with TV they’ve missed, or the ability to act on a recommendation the next day, is keeping viewers in the broadcast stream.

I’m sure that at some point some linear viewing will switch to on-demand, but the net total TV viewed might be higher. The issue is really about whether TV companies can make an on-demand eyeball as valuable as a broadcast one. Let’s wait and hear what the TV company Televisionaries have to say on the topic on the 20th.

Having spent the last 12 months looking in detail at the role of on-demand in all its forms, there are times that I still wonder what’s it for. More importantly, why would a TV company much such an effort to drive their viewers to it. All of the VOD services set up to date (and I’m talking about TV VOD predominantly) have been configured as though they are competitors to the main broadcast business, rather than support tools. (Seperate brand identities, no reference to the main channel, no mechanism to drive the audience back to broadcast at the end of the show etc). This wouldn’t be so bad if the commercial model had been sorted out and VOD was profitable on its own, but it hasn’t. At the moment, VOD is cannibalistic to audiences and broadcast revenues. If you are head of ad sales at a major broadcaster, you must be shaking your head in despair at why your company has launched (or is about to launch) one of these services.

One could argue, (if you were feeling ‘inflammatory’), that the main commercial broadcasters should either : close down their TV VOD services until they have discovered a stand alone commercial model; or reposition them as a customer support tool for the main channel, and use them to drive audiences back to broadcast. (with all the design and presentation changes that requires).

I would therefore like the conference address the question of ‘what is VOD for’ from a commercial point of view (as long as it won’t ‘provoke others’)

Tee hee – Nigel