Advertiser's TV channel stalled

net1

Plans by a consortium of the UK's largest advertisers to launch an advertiser TV channel have been put on hold just one month before it was due to launch, according to a report in Brand Republic.

The group of 10 advertisers, which includes Orange, Unilever and Honda, represent 40 per cent of total TV advertising spend. They have been working with the digital TV specialist Zip TV to create a rival interactive TV channel to Sky's offering, called Consortium4TV.

Honda had been due to become the first advertiser to launch a campaign using the channel in April. However, this has been put back because of problems securing the necessary agreements with the broadcasters.

Consortium4TV launched last August in a bid to offer a cheaper interactive service than that available through Sky Active.

The plan was for the advertisers to club together to buy bandwidth directly from BT and Astra. They would then divide the bandwidth between them and run interactive ads in the normal way in commercial airtime.