Targeted Advertising on itv.com

You can see the live TV Guide here

Background

As the leading commercial broadcaster in its territory, ITV has a high level of traffic visiting its web site promoted by on air advertising.

The broadcaster was looking to reach users that did not exclusively watch ITV programming.

ITV.com appointed TV Genius to develop a multichannel, interactive TV Guide, with three key priorities:

  • To encourage viewers of non-ITV programming to user itv.com to plan their viewing
  • To promote ITV’s on demand online services to these users
  • To ensure that the service to pay for itself through advertising

The Solution

Stage 1 – Design

The first stage was to design a guide that would meet user’s needs in planning their viewing and ensure that the service could cover its own costs. TV Genius, who ITV had chosen as the platform provider for the TV Guide, recommended implementation of a fully personalisable, search driven TV Guide.

The core personalisation features provided by TV Genius included the ability to select a set of favourite channels and shows or topics that users were interested in, and the establishment of email or SMS reminders when these shows came on TV.

In order to ensure the service achieved necessary advertising revenues, TV Genius’ targeted advertising system was implemented to ensure that adverts served on the service were relevant to user’s interests: for example, users clicking on shows broadcast in HD were offered advertising for HD subscriptions from cable and satellite operators.

Stage 2 – Using the Guide To Promote ITV’s Services

With a service that was compelling for users and monetisable online, the final step was how to promote ITV’s own content ahead of the competition’s.

The first stage was to ensure that ITV’s own channels appeared at the top of the guide by default. Although users could subsequently personalise away from ITV’s channels, this was not an option that many users took.

The second element of driving viewers to watch ITV’s programming online required integrating the on demand content into the TV Guide: this was done in three areas: the TV grid, search, and email reminders. In the TV grid, users were encouraged to scroll the grid backwards to view shows from the previous day and subsequently click on them to watch them online. On demand content was promoted in the search results and when a user clicked on a show recommendations for on demand content were included in the email reminders.

Results

The result of this project is a TV guide developed for itv.com which is used by millions of users each month and drives substantial usage of ITV’s online service.

This project shows how broadcasters can use innovative search and personalisation technologies to attract viewers to shows that they might otherwise not watch, and in particular to drive traffic to watch shows on the internet, rather than through traditional broadcast means.

The project innovates in its use of a traditional TV guide for channels to build a direct relationship with consumers over the internet without the need for traditional broadcast means.