Written with the support of TPS and CanalSatellite.

• Provides practical information for designing, deploying and operating an interactive television service.

• Offers concrete examples of French initiatives.

• Allows advertisers to assess the risks and potential offered by this new type of service.
Opportunities and prospects
• 1999 will have witnessed a rapid development in interactive television services.
The emergence of these new services opens up the way to new sales methods for material and immaterial goods via the television set.
The likely generalisation of TV-based interactive advertising, direct marketing and electronic commerce practices therefore constitutes a major trend in the TV programme-publishing sphere, amounting to new methods for programme producing and also, a new source of revenue for the sector.
However, advertisers, or to be more precise, the potential promoters of these services, still need to size up the issues at stake, as regards the possibilities offered by these new types of services enabled by the use of digital TV receivers and associated technologies.
Indeed, if advertisers have only recently mastered the advantages of the Web as a medium for promotion and direct sales, very few seem to consider TV in this light.

• This study takes stock of the current degree of development in interactive television (iTV) on a worldwide scale and of the opportunities and medium-term growth prospects that this advent represents for players involved in the TV-related business.
Since the offering of iTV services is much more developed in France than anywhere else in the world, this report examines the French market in detail to see how it is organised and how it operates in order to provide the essential operational elements for setting up an iTV service project.

• This report particularly presents a thorough analysis of interactive television services specifically designed to be viewed on a TV set, which represent a potential medium for direct marketing and e-commerce: - enhanced-TV services (programme-related information, bookmaking facilities, impulse teleshopping, etc.) - value-added interactive services unrelated to TV programmes (weather reports, TV banking, e-shops, games, etc.).

• This study gives clear answers to the following questions: - in concrete terms, how do you implement an iTV service? - how is the interactive services market and value-added chain organised (design, development, broadcasting, reception)?- what are the turnover and financing prospects for these services? - what are the stakes and advantages of iTV in relation to the Internet? - in the event of an increased number of “free-to-air” interactive TV services, will this necessarily imply the redistribution of current players' roles (pay-TV platform operators, TV channels, equipment manufacturers and technology providers)?