Crusha ad shows there are alternatives to Sky on iTV: an iTV ad for milkshake has become the first to bypass the usual Sky route. Is this the end of Sky's iTV dominance?

New Media Age, August, 2003 by Jonathan Webdale

Last week NMA reported how an interactive TV campaign for Crusha milkshake, featuring xylophone-playing cats, could deal a blow to Sky's dominance of the iTV advertising market and its hopes for industry-wide adoption of its new WTVML ad templates.

The campaign, developed by 3rd Sense for British Sugar, has raised eyebrows in some quarters of the iTV industry due to the fact that it's the first to run on Sky channels but takes the viewer into bandwidth from another provider--Cartoon Network owner Turner Broadcasting--rather than relying on Sky's own bandwidth.

Before the Crusha ad, all iTV campaigns on the Sky Digital platform --essentially those on Sky and IDS's Flextech and UKTV channels--ran on bandwidth from Sky itself, with the majority also developed...