Web-based technologies and interactive TV had rapidly penetrated the advertising mainstream and displace traditional forms of advertising. As most television advertising goes unnoticed, more and more advertisers attempt to communicate their stories across media platforms. The consistent spikes in usage statistics on television, Internet and mobile devices dedicatedly support the three-screen advertising in a cross media environment. Maximizing opportunities for traditional TV ads in collaborating with Internet ads will continuously improve the impact of a mass media campaign. We present the current research efforts in the field of analyzing TV ads as well as linking TV ads with relevant Internet ads. While our relationship with TV remains strong and durable, consuming media from anywhere, at any time, is a crucial part of the much broader picture of consumers utilizing rich media. How to collect correlated advertisements across multiple media platforms such as TV and Internet would see significant growth potential in cross-media marketing campaigns.
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With the advent of the Internet and interactive TV, the advertising industry is much better turning to measurability and differentiation (Razorfish, LLC, 2009). Advertising is becoming less wasteful and its values measurable. The Internet enables advertisers to pay only for real and measurable actions by consumers, such as clicking on a web link, an image or a video, placing a call, or buying something. Depending on an advertiser’s goal, proven formats include search ad, ad networks, online video and targeted media. In particular, the success of Google search ad formats like AdWords Sitelink (Ad Sitelinks) and AdWords InVideo ads (InVideo Ads) has eventually led to the significant growth of online advertising.On the other hand, differentiation is an important key to increased market share. Good branding should determine who is and who is not the intended audience. Audience fragmentation is driving the development of geographic, demographic, contextual, and behavior targeting in online advertising. The Internet, with its ability to record behavior and acquire demographic information for a geographic location, is largely responsible for the increase in targeted ads. Now more and more advertisers are moving toward targeted advertising by coping with audience fragmentation.
The Internet is overtaking traditional television to become leading advertising sector. For example, the UK has become the first major economy where Internet ad spend overtook TV, with a record £1.75bn online spend in the first six months of 2009 (Sweney, 2009). With the increasing saturation of Internet penetration, a huge long tail of advertisers that even have not advertised have been attracted. The evolving landscape of online video services, e.g., YouTube (YouTube.com), YouKu (Youku.com), Hulu (hulu.com), etc., and interactive TV services, e.g., TiVo (Tivo.com), Sky+ (radioandtelly.co.uk), etc., are offering advertisers new opportunities to reach consumers more effectively and efficiently rather than traditional forms of advertising on a separate media platform. For example, Green Button Advertising of Sky+ (Green/Red Button advertising), an interactive advertising, can prompt the viewer to join the advertiser in a journey of some sort, allowing consumers to access long-form video advertising or branded content experiences. Moreover, Red Button Advertising of Sky+, can even trigger a viewer action by an on-air call to deliver a wide range of campaign objectives from enhancing a brand, giving more information, extending a TV ad, impulse led purchasing, building a database and market research. Google offers several advertising solutions, e.g., text overlay ads, In-stream video ads, placement targeting, etc., to help advertisers target video content across Google’s ad networks, based on the widest reach of YouTube (Video Advertising Solutions).
Television’s most outstanding attribute is its ability to reach a vast number of consumers at the same time. TV ads’ other advantages are impact, credibility, selectivity, and flexibility (Vilanilam & Varghese, 2004), although the cost of creating, producing, and airing a TV ad are staggering, and most traditional TV advertising goes unnoticed. Critically, interactive television (generally known as iTV) (Kunert, 2009) allows viewers to interact with TV program content and TV-related content. Interactivity with TV related content may provide more information about what is being advertised, and even the ability to buy it. However, as a competitive media from Internet-based content, internet ads continue to fast advance as Internet technology allows advertisers to target by demographics, geographic, contextual, scheduling, behavior, etc. More importantly, Internet ads give us access to a wide range of products or services information such as deals, discounts, reviews, etc. Targeting and interactive capabilities will make it essential and promising to investigate innovative ways to bridge the gap between Internet ads and traditional TV ads (Wang, et al., 2009).