Catalina Marketing and RespondTV have teamed up to offer targeted interactive TV coupons for consumer goods manufacturers and retailers.
Some of the 1 million people who have interactive TV sets will receive coupons on select commercials. When a viewer sees an interactive advertisement from his supermarket retailer or an advertiser, he can request a coupon.
The viewer enters his supermarket's loyalty card account number into the ad on the screen using the remote control. The coupon is automatically credited to his loyalty account. When the viewer goes to the grocery store, the coupon is redeemed at checkout when the loyalty card is scanned.
“This is truly smart interactive television,” said Eric Williams, vice president of research and development at Catalina, St. Petersburg, FL.
Catalina executives believe the TV ads are a natural extension of the company's customer loyalty marketing programs for manufacturers and supermarket clients, which account for 55 million loyalty cardholders in the United States.
“RespondTV's interactive infrastructure and transaction processing capabilities allow Catalina Marketing to extend its targeted couponing capabilities to the television screen,” Williams said.
Advertisers and retailers are not yet using the new technology, which was introduced at the Food Marketing Institute Marketechnics conference in New Orleans this month.
“We're using this show as a focus group [to ask] some of our key customers what they want to do,” said Steven Goforth, executive director of research and development at Catalina.
RespondTV has aired programming and advertising for Coca-Cola, Domino's Pizza, Ford, American Airlines, Sears, Ralston Purina and other major companies.
