Nigel Walley, Managing Director Decipher

How Broadband Saved Red Button

In 2007, various elements of the media industry and their adherents in the trade press sounded the death knell of the red button iAd. The consensus was that the arrival of broadband coverage meant that consumers could access on-demand video, quickly and cheaply on their home PC.  Supposedly it worked quicker and better than interactive TV and therefore robbed interactive advertising of its core rationale. The consensus was that if you wanted to get extra video in front of consumers then broadband was a much better way of doing it.  Broadband was going to kill red button

This argument still feels logical and yet..... it doesn’t appear to have come true. Broadband has failed to kill off red button advertising and, if some recent campaigns are anything to go by, the exact opposite may be true. The arrival of broadband may have been the making of red button. To explain this we look at a bit of recent history.  In its early phase, red button advertising was hampered by four issues, complexity, cost, coverage and content.

The complexity issue came from the fact that the early technology was slow, and put too many steps between the viewer and the interactive content they wanted. The technology wasn’t good enough for the media to flourish. However, the work that Sky and ITV have done in the last 5 years to improve this has really removed this as an issue, although the perception still lingers among the agency fraternity. The same can be said for costs.  In its early years, the costs imposed by the platforms were punitive. Now they are working constructively with ITV to ensure that incremental costs of a red button complement to a campaign are reasonable.  Red button is now good value for the interaction delivered.

Coverage remains an issue, with red button iAds only available on Sky’s satellite platform and Freeview.  ITV have successfully circumvented this issue by launching interactive content on their 24/7 menu on both cable and Sky, meaning that they have been able to offer advertisers a consistent red button outcome on two different TV platforms.

Each of these initial three issues contributed to the difficult genesis of the red button format.  However, the big issue was always getting the right content to run as part of a campaign. Main creative agencies would simply not plan for, or create the required content as part of the main campaign creation. Throughout the early years of red button, it was common for a media agency to make a reasoned planning based argument for using red button, only to be stymied because the creative agency hadn’t made any content, and now didn’t have any budget left. On those occasions where there was budget left, the creative challenge was often relegated to the digital agency who often struggled to make content that was consistent with the main campaign that would be prompting interaction. 

The advent of broadband and its impact on video consumption has changed the landscape.  The recent T-Mobile campaign featuring dancing in Liverpool Street station is a great example.  Because of the distribution potential of mechanisms like viral email, and sites like YouTube, main creative agencies have begun to create much broader suites of content as part of the main campaign. Whereas previously they would have made the 30’ ad and nothing more, it is becoming more common, as with the T-Mobile campaign, for the main agency to shoot 5’, 10’ 20’ short form accompanying films, as well as longer versions and ‘director’s cuts’ of the main campaign.  When the potential of red button advertising is now raised by the media agencies, it turns out that there is a huge amount of content to play with. The advent of broadband is finally starting to make creative agencies truly media neutral.  They just need to focus on what consumer behaviour they want to engender around content, make sufficient variety of formats to enable that outcome, and let the media agencies decide which mix of distribution technologies would best suit that outcome.

There was always a mis-understanding of what red button could and should deliver to the market.  Because the technology enabled a response, it was often assumed that red button should always therefore be a full response medium. However, very often viewers just want a bit more of what they have just had.  As red button has got better and better at delivering video, it has been easier to see red button for what it is – the first video-on-demand platform. 

In this respect, red button advertising is following the same path as red button programme content. Awareness of red button in Sky homes is high, due to the BBC, ITV and Sky’s persistence in using the format around content. As with advertising, the content teams have taken time to establish what works. This is a natural process of experimentation which has naturally involved testing some formats and ideas which haven’t been successful. However, the broadcasters will tell you, red button has established itself as a permanent companion for news, sport and big, infrequent multi-focus events like Glastonbury, or (surprisingly) the Chelsea Flower Show. 

The sophistication in research around these red button formats has highlighted the final strength of red button – immediacy. As alternative distribution methods have arrived for getting different video formats in front of viewers, it has forced us all to think more about what each one does well.  Many products and services that use red button aren’t front of mind when consumers get themselves in front of a computer. Research is now showing us that broadcast TV has a unique ability to flow an audience seamlessly from one piece of content into another, having built the appetite for the content on the main channel. This attribute is becoming the cornerstone of red button thinking in programme making.  It is also the cornerstone of a successful red button video campaign. We should thank the broadband world for giving us the chance to explore this with so much video content now available to us.

Nigel Walley
Managing Director, Decipher