The iMEDIA project

The iMEDIA project will establish a business and technology framework that will support Suppliers, Advertisers and Consumers in the digital TV Advertising process. The iMEDIA system will broadcast advertisements comprising both video and/or interactive content, monitor (upon consumer permission) the interactivity of viewers in order to measure the efficiency of the advertisements and products and finally offer personalised information through a TV set-top box in the consumer household.

iMEDIA will provide an intelligent mediation platform for enhancing consumer/supplier relationships, by establishing the necessary methodologies, practices and technologies for:

a) The broadcasting of personalized interactive advertising to targeted consumer clusters, providing gateways for access to product catalogues in other digital environments

b) The analysis of interactive consumer behavior for the evaluation of advertising and product efficiency

c) The empowering of TV audience as interactive viewers and active consumers with total control on their private personal information.

Figure 1. iMedia Overall Architecture

Key Issues

iMEDIA new business model

iMEDIA will introduce an innovative business framework, in order to support the virtual value chain of the advertising sector in the digital TV environment. The traditional industry value chain, which is depicted in a simplified way in figure 2, encompasses the supplier of the products, the advertising company and the TV channel. In this case, the consumer is a passive receiver of the end-product, namely the advertisement, and is not considered to play an active role within the value chain. The introduction of new interactive technologies in the digital TV environment can significantly trans­form the way businesses operate, resulting in a totally new business model introducing the following innovative concepts:

• consumer is an active participant of the value chain, providing feedback to suppliers and advertising companies;
• consumer can have a personalized and interactive experience while protecting his own consumer identity;
• the advertising company can analyse the consumer profiles in clusters to develop target marketing techniques, without directly relating to personal data (align to the EU data protection legislation). Consumer identities can be considered as portable profiles to be used in other related interactive environments (Digital TV and Internet).

Moreover, iMEDIA introduces self-regulatory schemes for consumer to business relationships, embedding consumer right protection regulations. iMEDIA business framework transforms and extends the traditional TV advertising model by enabling complementary commercial activities such as on-line retailing. Through interactivity and navigation capabilities, spot markets can be instantiated extending the customised advertising experience. Finally, the attraction of new players or diversification of existing players (advertising companies, TV channels, suppliers) in the advertising value chain is achieved through the extension to on-line retailing services by acting as virtual retailers

Innovation in interactive marketing

Within the project the current state-of-the-art of interactive marketing will be explored and further research will be conducted in the following areas:

• new interactive and personalised marketing schemes;
• quantitative measurement techniques to measure the efficiency of interactive advertising;
• develop models for consumer profiling;
• techniques for clustering of consumer information to assure target market segmentation on well defined clusters;
• dynamic scheduling algorithms for filling the advertising slot by incorporating parameters of interactivity and personalisation.

Innovation in technology

• Explore datamining and OLAP technologies for clustering market-based information;
• Convergence of Digital TV infrastructures with the Internet environment;
• Mobile agents to be applied as technology for the consumer household environment (set-top box);
• Mediation / brokerage technology developments;
• Explore and extend broadcast technology capabilities to lead from mass to target customisation;
• Develop component based systems for interactive Digital TV advertising environment;