The participation media industry is now extremely well controlled and this has created a great environment for interactive TV services and other media services to flourish.

Houlihan is also confident that 2009 will see the return of SMS voting for major TV shows and this, combined with the launch of voice shortcodes across all the UK's network operators, means that the mobile offering to consumers is set to be better than ever.

"All this shows that the industry is putting the consumer first and we now have the tools, to not only do this, but to create an even better experience for the consumer to use interactive media services on their mobile," says Houlihan.

Chief among this is what Houlihan dubs "extending the journey" for the consumer, expanding simple interactive media services in to something more akin to loyalty programmes for the broadcasters and the operators.

"Every time someone enters a competition or votes, they get a PIN. They can then take this PIN online and win a prize," explains Houlihan. "This drives traffic from the media, to the mobile and on to the web, as well as rewarding the viewer's interaction with prizes and other things - this is the extension of the journey: from simply participating to getting a full multimedia immersion."

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