JamieG Analysis

Recently Channel4/UK pulled the plug on the RED BUTTON.  Better known as the Interactive TV button.

See “Channel 4 pulls plug on red button interactive advertising”

I have been expecting this for a long time.  Hopefully we can accept this and move on.

Unfortunately there is still quite a bit of traction in this area in some parts of the web based video.

Alex Lindsay of PixelCorps, who makes a lot of Web video content, still pushes this idea quite strongly.  This goes against the trend of; 1. Apple dropped Quicktime technology supporting it. 2. the MPEG standard created to bring this technology forward has largely been abandoned and never implemented to a usable degree.

In my blog I have always tried to make it clear that this type of technology would never take off.  The main reason for this is simple. Implementation costs.

Costs for making video content are getting more and more fragmented as the path to the view gets more and more fragmented.  There is already a huge amount of pressure on cutting costs for making advertising content or content in general.  Adding to this cost with interactive content such as the red button, simply does not make any sense.  If you want to do interactive, go use google AdSense at a fraction of the cost.

This is not to mention that interactivity during linear video content had always been a questionable feature.  Views like un-interrupted viewing.  People PAY to have no commercials.

Long form linear content with interactive advertising was dead before it began.  The big players just didn’t want to believe it.  They thought they could control the direction of the industry.  How wrong could you be..