The new issue of Marketing Magazine has an article titled, Commercials, etc., written by Danny Kucharsky about a new Montreal-based company called etc.tv.
etc.tv is starting a 10-week trial on Quebec TV stations TVA and LCN working through the Videotron digital cable service illico that allows viewers to clickthrough to longer ad formats with more content information. Etc.tv calls this “telescopic television advertising.”
Twist Image was quoted in the article which can be read here: Marketing Magazine – Commercial, etc. By Danny Kucharsky.
Here are some additions thoughts on the subject:
There have been many question marks when it came to how this type of media was going to roll out, and it seems like etc.tv hooked into the right type of cable technology with the right media partners. I guess the last question that remains to be seen is how great the creative is, the production costs for extended segments and what the clickthrough will be to see the extended messages and content. Being able to gage this type of success in the television advertising space is very exciting.
For marketers, etc.tv could be offering what the ‘Director’s Cut’ did for the DVD business. Allowing consumers to go further down the rabbit-hole, etc.tv has many future opportunities to use their landing page for up sell, cross sell and even new partnership marketing opportunities. I can see this going even further into a type of referral marketing. It’s like on Amazon when you find your book of choice and there are the “related items.” Those “if you liked this, then you might be interested in this…” type of scenarios can lead to huge wins for etc.tv.
When you see business models like etc.tv you can’t help but see the true assimilation of narrowcasting into broadcasting. That, in and of itself, makes the business model very sexy. You have the mass shotgun of television advertising and then you tie-in a highly targeted sniper narrowcast of more in-depth brand opportunities based on the consumer’s desire.
Lastly, read Life After The 30-Second Spot by Joseph Jaffe.