Online Marketing Consultant.

There’s been much talk in meedja circles about UKTV’s rebrands for three of its main channels, UKTV Gold (GOLD), UKTV Gold+1 (Watch) and UKTV Drama (Alibi), but little mention of how the brands will work online.

All three channels quite rightfully have unique identities, although I do think UKTV should have stuck to the formula of having an overall brand feel so viewers know the channels belong to the same family.

I say that with my online marketing head on as that strategy would have allowed UKTV to offer a marketable web presence which houses content to complements the programmes, video on demand and community features.

We will have to see if UKTV plans to house the websites for the new channels on UKTV.co.uk as it presently does.

Dave, the only channel which does not use UKTV branding, is hosted on the UKTV.co.uk domain. This URL (uktv.co.uk/dave/homepage/sid/5002) shows up in Google when you search for the brand.

So although there is no UKTV branding on the Dave channel or Dave marketing material, it is expected that people have an affinity with UKTV (as that is the domain name), after all that’s what shows up on the Google page and that’s where the online brand engagement by people using search begins.

And yes, as well as the title and descriptive text, searchers DO look at the URL to when deciding whether it’s the right website to click on when looking at a search engine results page.

Unsurprisingly all UK domain names for the new channels are gone, as are the .tv equivalents. So I can only assume the websites will remain on the uktv.co.uk domain.

Once all UKTV stations are stripped of UKTV branding the public will cease to have an affinity with UKTV and thus UKTV.co.uk, which will certainly have implications for click through rates.

There’s also the possibility of confusion when advertising the URL on air? Advertising UKTV.co.uk on air does nothing to drive engagement with the individual channel brands, as they are totally divorced from the corporate name.

I know UKTV is very active with its marketing, and they have been very successful with rebranding UKTV G2 to Dave, and probably have a strategy in place for online. We’ll have to wait and see what it is.