The number of IPTV subscribers is accelerating. Which means the need to keep the user experience for IPTV entertainment services at the leading edge is far more acute.

If you want to use your IP infrastructure to expand your revenues through personalized and interactive advertising, Alcatel-Lucent offers some tips and helpful advice. You many want to check some of their offerings as well.

Since you're positioned between advertisers and the subscriber, you can use your relationships with subscribers and network assets \"to create audiences -- helping advertisers reach the right consumer with the right ad at the right time,\" they advise.

\"Service providers have begun to tap into the potential revenue of interactive advertising or are planning to,\" Alcatel-Lucent finds in a comprehensive white paper on the subject. \"Nearly half of the service providers surveyed by Heavy Reading are already selling advertising and most of the remaining service providers are either evaluating their strategy or making plans to use some form of advertising soon.\"

And bear in mind that not only does IP technology help you to deliver the ads more efficiently, \"you are able to more precisely measure ad performance and IPTV usage, providing your media partners with insight into the consumer to better tailor their advertising and content offerings.\" That sure sounds like a win-win-win situation, as Alcatel-Lucent says: \"The consumer sees ads that are more relevant, the advertisers know they are reaching the right consumer, and you unlock new revenues.\"

In fact, the white paper concludes, \"Service providers agree that advertising will become an important revenue stream over the next five years. Over two-thirds of the service providers surveyed expect advertising to generate up to 10 percent of their revenue in the next five years. Almost a third of them project over 10 percent of their revenue will come from advertising in the next five years.\"

Alcatel-Lucent is offering an IPTV advertising tool built upon its 7750 Service Router, saying it has \"the advertising capabilities you need with minimal incremental investment.\" It's described as supporting linear ad insertion with effective geographic targeting, and has an evolution path to more personalized linear, video-on-demand and interactive advertising \"while positioning you for the migration to multi-screen advertising.\"