Here's an interesting article. Wonder if GMST will go head to head with WINK and their "back end" customer response. Also, don't know if selling "customer response" is legal from a privacy point of view...
Interactive-TV Expert Wink Gets
Some Big Investors to Bat an Eye
By YOCHI DREAZEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
For almost two decades, advertisers have been hearing that interactive
television would be the Next Big Thing in television technology. A number
of efforts have flopped, disappointing advertisers that envisioned millions of
couch potatoes happily clicking to request information or make a
purchase.
But one tortoise in this high-tech race is pulling ahead of a lot of the hares:
Wink Communications of Alameda, Calif. It has been around since 1994,
offering basic interactive functions through existing cable boxes and TV
remote controls. Wink, already in 150,000 U.S. homes, expects to be
available in 1.5 million homes reached by cable or satellite broadcasts by
the end of the year, although the increasingly cluttered interactive-TV
market has lots of contenders.
Wink, which aims to go public soon, got a
boost Monday when satellite broadcaster
DirecTV, a unit of GM's Hughes
Electronics, invested $15 million for a 4%
stake, and pledged to install the Wink
technology in at least four million of its home
systems by the end of 2001. Microsoft last
month agreed to invest $30 million for a
10% stake, planning to use Wink's
behind-the-scenes technology in future
versions of WebTV, which offers e-mail
and Internet access through set-top boxes.
Wink's own technology is fairly simple,
allowing TV networks and advertisers to
embed simple interactive elements into their
broadcasts. When content with an
interactive element is available, a small,
translucent "i" appears on the viewer's screen. With a click of the remote,
the information itself, such as searchable sports scores on ESPN, appears
in a black box at the bottom of the screen.
Current Wink-enhanced commercials generally allow consumers to
request coupons, product samples or information by clicking some buttons
on their remotes. In the near future, Wink hopes to roll out technology that
would give viewers the ability to purchase goods directly through their TV
sets, using a credit-card number.
CBS, General Electric's NBC, Walt Disney's ABC and ESPN and Time
Warner's CNN are among those that have licensed Wink's software, along
with advertisers that include Charles Schwab, AT&T, Clorox and Ford
Motor. Wink's technology can run on more-advanced cable and satellite
boxes as well. Some companies' previous interactive efforts relied on data
that had to be entered by system employees at considerable cost, but the
Internet now allows computers to update the interactive snippets
automatically and cheaply.
Advertisers particularly like Wink's invisible "back-end" functions: It can
provide precise tracking data about consumer responses to shows and
commercials. Nor are the tracking data limited to those who actually
responded to an interactive ad: Wink can also chart how many viewers
actually watched a commercial without switching the station, potentially
allowing companies to judge the efficacy of their ad campaigns as never
before.
"We can add some new measurability to television advertising that wasn't
there before," says Allan Thygesen, Wink senior vice president. "This
provides hard data on the effectiveness of a television advertising
campaign."
Advertisers say they signed on with the company to get in on the ground
floor of a promising, if unproven, technology, although they don't expect to
reap any financial benefits in the short term. "We have close to six million
customers. Not that many people even have Wink, so our opportunity for
new business development isn't actually all that big right now," says John
Lane, the director of Internet advertising at Charles Schwab. "We got into
this for the future."
"This was about starting to learn how amenable the market is to this type
of advertising," says Stephen Block, advertising group director at AT&T.
"We wanted to see how this interaction happened a lot more than we
wanted to get new customers."
Some advertisers simply add interactive enhancements to existing
commercials, curbing the cost of creating new ads. "We like that we can
still use our traditional ads," says Peter DeLuca, Schwab's vice president,
advertising. Schwab spots allow consumers to request information about
financial services.
Wink, which has yet to become profitable, gets revenue largely from the
sales leads it refers to advertisers, with lesser sums coming from
companies and networks licensing its technology. It is somewhat protected
because it isn't going head-to-head with companies like Microsoft and
America Online to provide the glitzy "interface" customers see when they
watch interactive TV, the "front end."
"Wink created a proprietary system because there wasn't one out there,
but their real assets are in tracking viewer responses," says Josh Bernoff,
an analyst with the technology-consulting firm Forrester Research. For
Wink, "it doesn't matter what's on the front end." |
