The service enables advertisers to offer TV viewers content lasting up to two hours. Viewers use the green button on their Sky remote to book this longer-form content into their Sky Guide or record it via their Sky+ box.
While the green button may be a new development, there have been previous attempts to introduce interactive advertising using the red button. However, these failed to capture the imagination of advertisers.
The BBC successfully uses red-button prompts to invite viewers to watch extra content such as news and alternative angles for sports events. Commercial broadcasters Channel 4 and Five scrapped their red button ad services, however, after deciding the technology was too expensive. The former is now using Sky's green button to promote its upcoming programmes, but not for brand advertising.
Brands view red-button ads as technically complex and overly costly. Sky's Video Advertiser Location red-button ads, which have been used by brands including Cadbury's and 20th Century Fox, cost about £50,000 a month.
Chloe Smith, head of interactive advertising at Sky Media, says costs are lower for green button. 'A green-button campaign with 15 minutes of long-form content would be £20,000 a month,' she says. 'With five minutes it would cost just £10,000 a month, plus broadcaster surcharges.'
Phil Mahoney, broadcast account director at PHD, says he has not used 'clunky and expensive' red-button services for clients for years. He claims the main reason the platform is unpopular is that viewers have to interrupt the programme they are watching to access the content.
Broadcasters have also moved away from red button to invest more cash in developing successful video-on-demand services. Nonetheless, despite the emergence of green-button services, Smith says Sky has no plans to ditch the red button altogether. 'I think at some point, in a converged world, red buttons could link through to websites,' she adds.
Some agencies are convinced that the green-button platform will be a more cost-effective means of highlighting content, especially for entertainment and automotive brands. 'Green button can work as part of a bigger communications strategy,' says Mahoney.
Warner Bros, in a deal brokered by PHD, will use green-button content to premiere preview clips and behind-the-scenes content from the studio's big summer release, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Meanwhile, Sharwood's is using its campaign to demonstrate how its range of sauces can be used to cook dishes such as Pad Thai and Rogan Josh.
The content drives consumers to the sharwoods.com website, with the strapline 'So much still to discover'. Booked by Starcom, the activity will run for a month and coincides with a £5m TV ad campaign by the brand.
Sky viewers who regularly flick through recorded programme listings could easily be prompted to take a look at extra green-button ad content stored on their Sky+ box. However, Mahoney warns that the ads may appeal less to viewers without Sky+. 'Where the ads are booked into the Sky Guide, green button will not be as effective,' he says.
Sky expects the green button to be used by brands to show additional TV ad footage, behind-the-scenes 'making of' documentaries and advertiser mini-dramas. Andrew Morley, Motorola's vice-president of marketing for mobile devices EMEA, sees the platform's potential for showing valuable content - such as video of David Beckham promoting the Aura mobile. 'You can build a dialogue which is much better than a monologue from a standard 30-second spot,' he says.
Sky's green-button offering has been a long time coming, but the challenge for the broadcaster now is to encourage enough brands to try out the service, so that it does not go the way of its ill-fated red predecessor.