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A consortium of major brands, iTV specialists and data experts, Zip is aiming to invigorate advertising on the platform. It might shift the balance away from Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB.

With more than six million subscribers, Sky Digital is Europe's largest digital TV platform and, until recently, the main player in the UK on which 'true' interactive TV advertising is possible; cable platforms do not allow 'jumps' into interactive applications from adverts, while Freeview, which is owned by the BBC, Crown Castle International and BSkyB, is ad-free.

Sky has an in-house agency, Sky Interactive, with which a brand or agency works to build an interactive campaign for the Sky platform. Costs depend on the complexity of the execution.

To develop a completely 'original' campaign - labelled a Designated Advertiser Location (DAL) - costs can soar. According to News Corporation-owned iTV developer NDS, testing costs can account for up to half the total expenditure of an iTV campaign. Then, to run an interactive ad on Channel 4, it must be reworked - and tested - in order to work with the channel's different technology.

Now this status quo is about to be challenged. Zip launches on 15 July, offering a 'jump point' to which Sky Digital viewers will be taken when they press their remote control's red button during an interactively enabled campaign, and which it hopes will allow one ad to fit all - including Channel 4.

Zip will also offer new tools for building ads, with the aim, it says, of improving the creative possibilities of iTV campaigns. Eventually, Zip envisions operating its own channel, offering interactive, advertiser-funded programming and be available through the viewers' EPG (Electronic Programme Guide), although such a launch is at least six months away.

Though Zip is playing down any sense of a power shift, instead pushing itself as a vehicle for 'shared learning' on interactive TV advertising, it does admit that it is seeking to wrest control of iTV advertising from the platform-owners - chiefly Sky - and place it in the hands of the advertisers.

But Sky, while welcoming the arrival of a new option for advertisers publicly, is coming to resent the implication that Zip is filling a gap left by Sky's failings. The company has been ploughing the iTV furrow on its own since the first wave of hype began four years ago.

A relaunch of Sky Digital two years ago - along with a resurgence in new media spend by advertisers generally - has revitalised the medium, and Sky says it has now run more than 500 interactive ad campaigns.

The newcomer's arrival, and particularly what Sky perceives as a negative attitude to previous work, has ruffled a few feathers. Sky Interactive commercial director Will Harding says: "Interactive TV advertising is a rapidly growing market, but it is very young. It is disappointing when a new entrant chooses to be negative about what has gone before rather than be positive about what they are going to be doing.

"The main thing is the implication that interactive advertising has not been creative, which is insulting to Sky, but also to the agencies that have worked on those campaigns. We have to emphasise that we welcome competition in this market - it can only be good for attracting new advertisers - but for Sky to be perceived as the villain of the piece is frustrating."

There are also some doubts about Zip TV's ability to deliver on its promises. Negotiations that will enable viewers to be jumped to the Zip platform from channels owned by Sky, ITV and IDS - which represents Flextech and UKTV - have yet to be completed at the time of writing.

The delays are understood to centre on reaching agreement over whether it is the broadcaster or Zip that should bear liability for when things go wrong with a campaign, either in terms of the content or the technology. A spokeswoman for Zip will say only that the negotiations are being conducted behind "closed doors".

Thus Zip's first campaign - for Honda - may be delayed past its original target date of 1 July and run only on Channel 4. Also, the campaign has been built using existing software provided by emuse Technologies, leading to accusations that Zip is failing to offer anything new.

Nonetheless, the roll-call of brands involved in Zip at start-up demands attention. The 11 founding advertiser members of Zip TV - among them Procter & Gamble, Unilever, BT and the COI - account for 40 per cent of the advertising spend of the UK's top 50 advertisers.

Membership fees are 'circa' £20,000 per year, and its members are convinced that their outlay - and the effort - will be well worthwhile.

Simon Thompson, UK marketing director of Honda - also a founder brand, says: "We are involved with Zip because it is our belief that iTV is about to explode in the same way the internet has, and we'd kind of like to be first. Interactive TV is absolutely applicable for our target audience, which is 35 to 45-year-old tech-savvy blokes. Also, conversion rates on our iTV ads have been far higher, but we don't know why - that's another reason we're involved."

A key part of Zip's raison d'etre will be to collect, analyse and distribute meaningful data from interactive TV campaigns run by its members.

Marketing data specialist Dunnhumby, data analysis firm Alchemetrics, and survey panel research company Continental Research have been recruited to assist in this effort, which will see amalgamated data from members' campaigns offered either for general release, to non-members for a fee, or for members' eyes only.

Thompson says: "Zip is a bloody good way of learning really quickly about consumer behaviour."

Once again, Sky resents any implication that it doesn't offer campaign response data itself, and says that it can provide Continental Research's services on its own interactive ad campaigns.

Still, existing iTV players, including agencies and even Sky, have broadly welcomed Zip's launch, although most seem to be adopting a "let's wait and see" approach.

Ilana Abrahams-Nolte, media director at digital agency itraffic, which has worked with British Airways on interactive TV campaigns and has a new project for the airline in development, says: "It will be interesting to see what Zip comes up with. Interactive TV needs some buzz, some fresh ideas - there is so much opportunity."