Loyalty programs are everywhere, and like many, I collect points in various programs through various means. I collect Aeroplan miles when I fly Air Canada, stay in certain hotels, rent cars from Hertz, pay my Bell Canada phone bill, and even when I buy gas at Esso. I collect Air Miles at Rona on an all-too-frequent basis (the consequence of owning a 148-year-old house), and now and then at the liquor store or elsewhere. Such programs can lead to repeat business -- and consumer loyalty.
In The Future of Television in Canada, a report I wrote earlier this year while with IBM Global Business Services, I stated that content purveyors need to find new ways to differentiate themselves, possibly including the use of loyalty programs. Well, according to a story from Broadcaster Magazine's daily news update, that's starting to happen. BM reports that Rogers OMNI Television is going to launch a new loyalty program called OMNI VIP. According to BM, this is the first ever rewards program for conventional TV viewers. The way it works is based upon viewers watching for the "word of the day" and entering this on a website to collect points that can be exchanged for "prizes". Of course, the potential flaw with this is that the word of the day is just that, one word shared by all viewers. It can be shared with non-viewers too (perhaps by e-mail, or posted somewhere on the Internet) and therefore used by people who didn't actually watch the broadcast. No doubt Omni realizes that, and further realizes that there's still promotional value for them and the advertisers (who provide the "prizes" for the "prize vault").
These are, obviously, early days for TV loyalty programs and we can expect to see much more sophisticated programs in the future. With the technology available today for customers watching digital cable, satellite or IPTV (the telco variety or otherwise), it is possible to accurately track what is being "watched". I put the term "watched" in quotation marks because, in and of itself, such technology merely indicates to which channel the device is tuned (or from which website a user is streaming). What it can't do is determine whether anyone is really watching. The lights may be on, but that doesn't mean that anyone's home. In the case of non-Internet viewing, this approach requires that the BDU (that's Broadcast Distribution Undertaking; i.e. the cable, satellite or telco-IPTV company) pass this information on to the individual stations (and perhaps raises some privacy issues, too).
Going a step further with the technology, and making the experience interactive, opens the door to truly knowing whether anyone's watching. Requiring loyalty program participants (and only program participants) to acknowledge, whether by mouse or remote, a periodic "are you really watching" kind of prompt in a timely manner would be a way of determining whether there truly are eyeballs engaged. While this measurement will never be as accurate as a gas pump in determining actual consumption, it will give a pretty accurate picture of things. Of course, this works for real-time TV consumption or, perhaps, a video-on-demand model, but does not work for recorded content on a DVR/PVR (although technology could be extended to accomplish this).
As competition heats up for video download from the Internet, I wouldn't be surprised to see one of iTunes, Google Video, AOL, Vongo, and the like introduce such a program. Or, perhaps, it will be one of the networks that kicks it off as part of their ever-increasing direct-to-consumer initiatives. Once someone starts the ball rolling, it could lead to a pervasiveness similar to today's gasoline scene wherein all of major players (at least in the Toronto marketplace, where I live) participate in some form of loyalty program. As I said in the IBM report, "consumer loyalty is tenuous at best"; loyalty programs will be one vehicle we will see in the future as content distributors, whether conventional or alternative, battle for the consumer dollar.
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