The application was developed by UK company Access to Audiences, or a2a, for Interactive TV. CEO Nick Brown told OUT-LAW that, for the time being, most people will not complete a transaction on TV, albeit the technology exists. "Complex buying processes won't work on TV," he said, explaining the modem that comes with a Sky subscription runs – at best – at about half the speed of a dial-up connection. "It's like the web experience of about five years ago," he says.
Instead, Brown believes that customers want to bookmark a product – be it a CD, a washing machine or a car – and consider it later, to avoid interruption of TV viewing. A reminder of that interest will await the customer when he next logs on.
A registration process will be necessary for first-time users: an e-mail address needs to be supplied over the slow connection before the advertiser knows where to send more information. The user then gets a link to a site that he can visit at his leisure, hopefully over a fast internet connection.
Brown says nobody else is offering a similar service to a2a. His company is acting as intermediary, initially targeting those advertisers who want to reach Sky's eight million viewers. Cable customers will follow. Freeview will not, at least for the time being, because its set-top boxes currently do not have modems.
It's not an end-to-end solution that a2a wants to sell. "The sellers have their own web sites, their own transaction and fulfilment systems," says Brown. Instead, what a2a is offering is a medium for viewers to initiate contact more easily than remembering a URL or phone number.