EVALUATION OF NEW DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS FOR
IP INTERACTIVE QOE BASED SERVICES
Jose I. Aznar, Jose Ruiz-Mas, L. Casadesus, Jose Saldana,
Julian Fernandez-Navajas and Eduardo Viruete
Communication Technologies Group (GTC), Aragon Institute of Engineering Research (I3A)
Dpt. IEC., Ada Byron Building., CPS, Univ. Zaragoza, 50018, Zaragoza, Spain
Keywords: IPTV platform, IPTV services, Business distribution channels, Service test-bed experimentation.
Abstract: The current paper focuses on the definition and evaluation of IP interactive services as new distribution
channels to establish a closer relation with end-users. These services present features which make them to
be an attractive distribution media that requires the analysis of the cognitive and affective aspects
experienced by end users during the interaction with them. To evaluate these channels an IPTV (IP-
Television) based service has been developed including different existing situations. To this target, previous
analyses have been driven to establish the most relevant variables which define users’ behavior during the
purchasing process. The obtained results may lead enterprises’ relationships with their clients, increasing
their implication and growing their loyalty.
1 INTRODUCTION
Multimedia services are rapidly evolving towards an
“as you wish/when you wish” concept, unveiling to
Telecom new business opportunities (Aznar, 2011).
These types of services not only consist of passive
multimedia applications but also include new
personalization and interactivity features which
improve users’ willingness to pay.
In terms of technology, EPs (Equipment
Providers), CPs (Content Providers) and Telecom
operators are expected to handle much higher traffic
levels, offering improved quality to the customers.
Several initiatives are taking place to this respect.
For instance, network based on the development of
complex network infrastructures and next generation
photonic architectures (Oliveira, 2009) support a
significant growth of video-based content. Other
suitable solutions consider that advocate for the
implementation of new functional blocks within the
current architectures to optimize end-user experience
through engineering techniques. One example of this
trend is the RUBENS architecture (RUBENS, 2010).
The evolution of e-business models is a direct
consequence of the convergence of these
technologies and multimedia services. This
convergence definitely impacts end-users’
possibilities: for instance, users are capable to access
to certain TV content from different channels (cable,
satellite, household broadband connection, etc.) and
terminals (TV, desktop, smart phone). Thus, the
evolution towards interactive services and the
development of new distribution channels have
important implications.
In this work, we address the implementation of
IPTV (IP-Television) as a new service distribution
channel bringing together both technological and
business perspectives. To this target, we first
propose the development of an IPTV-based platform
over which generic multimedia services can be
provided. The platform is based on an application
which enables the user to make use of several IP
services. Secondly, we define and evaluate the
acceptance of a concrete purchasing service which,
as new distribution channel, enables to establish a
closer relation with consumers. The service has been
embedded within the platform and it has been
analyzed to derive practical conclusions concerning
users’ affinity with IPTV services and the impact of
advertisers on users’ behavior.
The remainder of this paper is organized as
follows: In section 2, personalization and
interactivity variables are presented. In section 3, the
platform and the IPTV-based service are explained.
The experimentation process is detailed in section 4.
Main results findings are discussed in section 5.
167
I. Aznar J., Ruiz-Mas J., Casadesus L., Saldana J., Fernandez-Navajas J. and Virute E..
EVALUATION OF NEW DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS FOR IP INTERACTIVE QOE BASED SERVICES.
DOI: 10.5220/0003519501670170
In Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business (ICE-B-2011), pages 167-170
ISBN: 978-989-8425-70-6
Copyright
c
 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

Section 6 concludes the paper.
2 PERSONALIZATION AND
INTERACTIVITY FEATURES
The recent evolution of technologies and
improvement of new applications have enabled to
deploy more sophisticated online environments that
make easier the enterprise-client interaction and
facilitate the achievement of relations among them.
In this context, the main target consists of analyzing
the effect generated by two new aspects related to
the online environments: personalization and
interactivity.
Personalization, as a variable related to the
users’ purchasing behavior has been addressed by
marketers during the last two decades. The
development of new technologies has increased the
customization possibilities, facilitating the
compilation and analysis of information.
Concerning the interactivity, this has
experienced a great evolution. Some works focused
on the technological implications of it have
meanwhile other works analyzed users’ perception
perspective (Wu, 2000). It is also noticeable the
contribution of (Kiousis
, 2002), which examines
communication and no-communication perspectives,
considering the technological aspects relative to
users perception. Thus, interactivity makes reference
to the degree that a certain communication
technology enables to design within a controlled
environment, in which users have the opportunity to
exchange messages.
3 PURCHASING CHANNEL
DESIGN
3.1 Platform Performance
The experiment consists of several IP-based services
gathered within an IPTV platform, to be offered to
end-users. These services comprise the access to
online broadcast TV contents and the visualization
of series and other off-line contents, together with
the traditional broadband Internet connectivity. The
advertising industry has been also incorporated. TV
channels are provided from a streaming server
directly connected to a DTTV (Digital Terrestrial
TV) receiver and offline contents are stored in a data
base which is accessed by the application. Figure 1
shows the IPTV platform scheme. The common
device to visualize the platform is the TV.
Nevertheless, since we aim to test through an
experiment, the platform has been installed in
desktops.
USER 1
USER 2
USER N
IPTV SERVICE
PLATFORM
OFFLINE MULTIMEDIA
CONTENT PROVIDERS
TRADITIONAL BROADBAND
INTERNET ACCESS PROVIDERS
DTTV ONLINE SERVER
IPTV-BASED SERVICES
PROVIDERS(“News-on-
Demand” package)
ADVERTISING
INDUSTRY
INTERACTIVITY
PERSONALIZATION
PURCHASE
Figure 1: scheme of the multimedia IPTV platform.
The user accesses the platform, which acts a
service distribution channel, to request for certain
offline content (series, documentaries, movies) to
online DTTV programs or to access other IP based
services. (e.g. the one proposed in section 3.2).
3.2 “News-on-Demand” IP Interactive
Service
In order to evaluate the platform as new distribution
purchasing channel a novel specific IPTV service
has been developed and integrated in the test-bed
platform, since IPTV based services present novel
features which may improve users’ affinity and
consequently willingness to pay.
The IPTV service we propose consists of the
visualization of a “News-on-Demand” package. The
package includes a compilation of most relevant
news, gathered in different categories (e.g. sports,
society, economics, etc.) offered to the end-user
whenever he/she is requested to start the service.
Several personalization and interactivity features
have been incorporated to the service. For instance,
it offers the possibility to configure another package
to be visualized the following day, selecting the
number of news of each type that he/she is interested
on and conferring a higher personalization degree.
The client is also capable to send a certain visualized
“New-on-Demand” through e-mail, share it in a
social network or introduce a commentary
concerning about it. Thus, the end-user is also
capable to interact with pairs. Finally, the
“purchase” button enables the user to acquire the
ICE-B 2011 - International Conference on e-Business
168

“News-on-Demand” package for the following day.
Figure 2 shows a snapshot of the “News-on-
Demand” package service.
[e-mail]
Joh n Doe commen ted >>
Th is can b e a great co nference abo ut clim ate.
Mar y Coop er commen ted >>
I´m going for sure. Who joins me?
Hey, man, take a l ook to
this new. There is going to be an important
con ference next Fr iday
PACKAGE NEWS
SELECTION MENU
E-MAIL SHARING
FORUM OPTION
MENU
SOCIAL NETWORK
SHARING MENU
MOST WATCHED
NEWS
Figure 2: “News-on-Demand” service snapshot.
4 EXPERIMENTATION
PROCESS
The experiment has been carried out by 50
participants from the University of Zaragoza with
ages among 20 and 30 years old. The selection of
this user-profile is based on the fact that this sector
is one of the most involved one in its relation with
new trend technologies. According to (Telefonica,
2009), the average profile of the European Internet
user is a person in the range of 16-24 years old
(82%) with high education attainment (85%) and
students (91%). In figure 3, it is shown the block
diagram of the experimentation process including
interactivity, personalization and purchasing options.
First, the user enters the platform and interacts
with it to make it familiar. The user configures
several personalization items (such as the type of
preferred contents or the main menu wallpaper) and
selects a certain offline or online content from the
selected “favorite IPTV contents” to be visualized.
Once the visualization finishes, the user has to
select the “News-on-Demand” service. Within the
service, the user visualizes a “News-on-Demand”
package that was configured by default when he/she
entered the application.
The user controls the reproduction through several
control options (“forward”, “redwing”, “play”, etc.).
Between each single item of news, a 2-second
advertisement has been inserted in order to latter test
the users’ behavior while introducing advertisers in
the service.
After experiencing the service, the user acquires
the “News-on-Demand” package for the following
day and answers a questionnaire that enable us to
measure the level of affinity and willingness to pay.
ACCESS THE
PLATFORM
MENU
PERSONALIZATION
Menu configuration
• Wallpaper
• Font, Music
• Favorite content type
CONTENT
SELECTION
Content visualization
“News-on-Demand”
package service
selection
INTERACTIVITY
• Share per e-mail
• Share on Social Networks
• Write a comment
• Control features
PERSONALIZATION
• New package section
New s-on-
demand
PURCHASING
option
ADVERTISEMENT
impact
PURCHASE
Answer questionnaire
EXIT THE PLATFORM
RESULTS
ANALYSIS
Figure 3: Block diagram of the experimentation process.
5 RESULTS AND FINDINGS
The experiment pretends to study the platform as a
service-oriented distribution channel for which end-
users can be billed. Thus, the study has been driven
to evaluate relevant aspects of the services. The
main studied aspects which this work has studied are
the affinity of end-users with new IPTV services, the
influence of advertisers on both the service and the
user, the possibility to store the content once it has
been visualized and different billing options which
could be considered. The results are practically
relevant since they represent the direct experience of
users while evaluating an IPTV service from the
perspective of the willingness to pay. The following
conclusions have been obtained.
In figure 4 it can observed users’ willingness to
pay in case end-users were charged by a weekly,
monthly or annual rate options. The rates have been
configured based on a previous research. It can be
appreciated, that end-users will not pay more than 3
Euros (78%) for a weekly subscription rate, but
while talking about monthly or annual rates, they are
not clear about how much they would be willing to
pay. Thus, from an e-business perspective, monthly
or annual rates are recommended since they range of
EVALUATION OF NEW DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS FOR IP INTERACTIVE QOE BASED SERVICES
169

prices which could be established are higher than for
a weekly rate.
1 - 3 €
WEEKLY RATE MONTHLY RATE ANNUAL RATE
0
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
3 - 6 €
6 - 8 €
3 - 5 €
5 - 10 €
10 - 12 €
12 - 15 €
8 - 10 €
25 - 35 €
35 - 45 €
45 - 55 €
55 - 65 €
Figure 4: Users’ willingness to pay for the News-on-
Demand” IPTV service.
The second evaluated service feature is the
possibility to incorporate 2-second advertisements
between “News”. Advertised contents are a very
common practice which usually impacts users’
experience. Nevertheless, as it can be observed in
Figure 5(a), over the 60% of those polled do not
consider a 2-second advertisement as an impairing
feature and only 16% have been impaired.
Moreover, this behaviour is subsequently confirmed
in figure 5(b), since 72% of polled people would
rather visualize advertisements instead of paying to
remove them from the service. This fact is highly
remarkable, since IPTV service providers may
incorporate advertisements in their platforms
charging for it to advertisers and billing for it.
The “News-on-Demand” package has been
evaluated as an attractive service for which polled
people would be willing to pay. On users’ side
personalization and interactivity enhance users’
experience. On e-business side, the “News-on-
Demand” service enables opportunities to bill both
end-users (for the service provided) and advertisers.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The convergence of technologies and multimedia
services has brought up the possibility to deploy an
IPTV based platform which comprises traditional
Internet services and new multimedia services.
Personalization and interactivity features,
definitely impacts users’ perception. The IPTV
platform designed has been proved to be a suitable
distribution channel to support new IP services.
The concrete IPTV service analyzed shows a
good predisposition at the side of users to pay for
these services. Results obtained show the practical
Advertisements have not impaired my visualization
Advertisements don´t mind to me
Advertisements have disturbed my visualization
No, I won´t never pay more
No, It might be an interesting option, but not.
mmm..I would pay more if the increase was minimum.
I hate advertisements and I would pay more to avoid them.
20%
64%
16%
22%
22%
50%
6%
ADVERTISEMENTS’ IMPACT ON USERS’ BEHAVIOR
WOULD A USER PAY MORE TO AVOID ADVERTISEMENTS?
A
B
Figure 5: Impact of advertisements on users’ behaviour.
nature of both the platform and the IPTV service.
They should also encourage to business
stakeholders to bet for the development of new e-
business strategies focused on the personal user
satisfaction. Further steps may comprise the
platform optimization and the evaluation of other
services (Video on Demand, online gaming).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been partially financed by CPUFLIPI
Project (MICINN TIN2010-17298) the Catedra
Telefonica of the Univ. of Zaragoza.
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