New Media Age reports that ITV, the UK’s largest advertising-supported TV network is extending its reach into mobile.

ITV already has an initiative it calls “Beyond the Spot”, which aims to sell advertisers and agencies other forms of marketing over and above the traditional 30 second spot. No, not 60 second spots, but stuff like Broadcast Sponsorship, Online Sponsorship and Branded Content.

“Beyond the Spot” will now include some mobile offerings, with the principle objective of enhancing 30 second slots by allowing the viewer to intereact with the ads. This includes functionality like mobile coupons, entering competitions and offering product samples.

My question is: what’s taken them so long to offer this? SMS has been mainstream for 5 years now and the technology for running these kinds of services has been available for that period too.

Better late than never, I s’pose. Now all they have to do is get agencies to understand what they’re talking about and we might see some interesting joined up marketing initiatives at some point.

However, the fact remains that the average Creative Director can’t get his/her brain round technology and is still deeply wedded to old school TV advertising. Until agencies start employing people who are fluent in both marketing and technology, rather than one or the other, we’re not going to see real marketing innovation develop.

I still see no signs of this happening to any great extent, so I think the mobile ITV initiative will be doomed to run (if anything) yet more “Txt and Win” campaigns, where the most creative thing the agency comes up with is dropping the “e” from “text”. Wow, that means that they must really be in tune with the yoof of 2day.