SinglePoint expanding interactive TV efforts: Firm provides technology for variety of campaigns

SinglePoint controlled the lion’s share, or 67%, of interactive TV transactions done via premium SMS in the third quarter of the year, having processed 35 million text-message transactions overall. This out of a total of more than 52 million total transactions made by text messages throughout the quarter, according to the company and a report it cited from Nielsen Mobile.
“We’ve been in interactive television really for well over a year and a half. We have put capable and reliable infrastructure behind our interactive television efforts, and what that translates to is a level of assurance for our ITV customers, broadcasters and the studios that is hard to find among our competition,” said Doug Busk, VP of industry relations at SinglePoint. SinglePoint competes against Telescope and a number of other vendors in the space.
“We’re excited that the level of activity that we’re seeing is being recognized in Nielsen’s report,” said Busk.
SinglePoint has inked deals with top entertainment media companies, and provides the technologies required of such campaigns. The company recently opened satellite offices in Los Angeles and New York City to support its growth in the entertainment industry.
Indeed, the company is currently working on numerous campaigns with the Bravo network, particularly the SMS offerings tied to the station’s hit show, “Project Runway.”
“Viewers can not only act as voters in the winners of the show, which model is going to be best, but they’re picking which haircut is going to be next, they’re picking which stylist is going to be superior, so it’s bringing the viewer that much closer to the television experience,” Busk said.
SinglePoint has also been heavily involved in Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign as he tries to reach supporters through SinglePoint’s text-messaging platform.
“We’re talking, you know, tremendous participation by the audience, and I think a fine example of how politics is going to leverage this medium, as it has others before it like TV, radio and online to drive interaction, to drive loyalty. And nowhere does loyalty matter more and personal experience matter more than politics,” Busk said.
Another major competitor in the text-voting space, Telescope Inc., has been managing premium SMS votes on American Idol and other hit shows for years. In late October the company announced that it had managed more than 800 million messages for mobile marketing and participation television programs through the first three quarters of 2007. A company spokesperson couldn’t be immediately reached to break out those numbers to give a sense of how many were premium SMS votes associated with interactive TV shows.