Xbox users are growing fast and they are growing up which in this context may be more important to advertisers.

Late 2007 the Extended Media Centre which hooks up to your Xbox 360 console will begin delivering iPTV through tradition telecom providers such as AT&T in the USA. Deutsche Telecom, Swisscom and Britsh Telecom are also said to have jumped on the Microsoft bandwagon. Valley View reporter Chris Nuttall reports in the Financial Times that “Microsoft’s announcement at the CES that by enabling a new medium for new players, this offering was of potentially more consequence than all the other announcements at the show this year.

He also states that ” While it makes perfect sense for companies from different sectors to converge on these new opportunities, it spells confusion for the consumer faced with so much more choice, differing technologies and connection methods for Ip TV and Video on Demand”.

In my opinion offering IP tv through the Xbox 360 makes perfect commercial sense. There are already more than 10 million Xbox 360 users in more than 37 countries. It will make it easier for you to enjoy games as well as your favourites TV channels from the same set up box. Over 5 million Xbox live community members will be connected allowing them to invite friends to play games, share content and talk over IP.

The Xbox 360 console enables telephone companies to use the set up box to rival those of existing cable and satellite TV companies which will sting current players in this market especially on a localized level such as Europe.

What does this mean for advertisers? Nothing much yet and it will depend what content is on offer. I do not believe this will be important for European advertisers until way into 2008 but it doesn’t hurt to keep in touch with the number of Xbox consoles being sold worldwide. In the meantime we will be keeping our eye out for competitors which I guess will be easy.

I mentioned this a while ago as one of my great personal ambitions for 2007: To bring VoIP Calls to IpTV. I find it surprising that the European interactive companies have yet to explore the possibilities of local advertising through IpTV. The beauty of this solution is that it is truly triple play namely integration of television, telephony with local search technology. In Europe our partner eStara is interested in finding partnerships to develop similar featers for Iptv so please contact me for more details.

Zodiac’s TVCallME allows iTV operators to offer paid search and hyper-localized advertising,” said Alexander Libkind, COO of Zodiac Interactive in the USA. “With TVCallME, viewers can simply find their favorite restaurants and click to receive a call from them immediately. As the service expands, viewers will have access to menus right on their TV. With Zodiac, cable operators will reinvent the TV Dinner.”

Libkind continued, “Operators can move beyond the traditional advertising CPM model and earn a transactional fee on every call. Unlike other transactional services that require deep integration with vendor’s back-end systems, TVCallME allows any vendor to display its services in a yellow pages-like environment with an immediate call to action - it’s a truly unique and instantly profitable advertising model for iTV operators and local businesses.”

“Through the set-top box, Zodiac’s TVLocalSearch will let consumers pull up a sidebar menu along side network programming to search on local business. It then gives an option to connect via telephone through Zodiac’s TVCallMe service with a click of the remote. Combined, TVLocalSearch and TVCallMe work much like eBay’s click-to-call service, which allows web surfers to search on a business, then click a hyperlink to initiate a call through Skype’s voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service.

While the search service is free to consumers, businesses will bid for the top position in the search query listing. Similar to Google Adware, businesses will bid for specific searchable keywords on a per-click basis. If a business wants to rally for a higher position on the list, they might bid $0.50 per click, rather than $0.40 cents per click.

Cable and satellite companies also will have an option to offer subscribers added services. For example, restaurants or mortgage brokers might pay extra to display menus or mortgage rates that consumers can access. “We’ve had some trials in localized communities of about 10,000 people where cable subscribers could press a button on their TV remote during this 30-minute ad to receive a pizza at their home for $9.99,” said Zodiac’s CEO Michael Rivkin.”

VoIP comes to the cellphone with is a new piece of free software named Truphone. You will be able to make free or VoIP-rate from Wi-Fi hotspots places with your mobile phone. It saves money by routing calls over the internet rather than via traditional mobile operators.

You may read the full article on PSFK which is at http://www.psfk.com

Recently I added the new ‘Discuss by Phone’ widget below the posts on the blogs to refect the flexible usability of eStara’s Click to Call feature on any kind of website. As more companies are adding blogs to their external communications it makes sense that you allow potential customers to contact you directly instead of waiting for you to respond to their comments or mailform request.Adding this icon to your blog is easy as 1,2,3 but requires an eStara account. You can request an eStara account by contacting me.

Kish Kish has launched a rather intersting application which can be used in Skype however could be used on any VoIP network. The KishKish Lie detector offers you a tool to detect the stress level of the person you communicate with over Skype. With the use of KishKish Lie detector you can monitor in real-time the stress level of the person you talked with. This allows you to gage the level of stress and modify your questions in real time. You could also use our KishKish SAM VSA that allows you to record the call and analyze the stress level off-line.I could see this being put to creative use in a online campaign. Contact me for more information. Clcik on the link to launch the Clinton call, you do have to have a voice recorder installed.