second screen monetisation business today
engagement, merely 19% of respondents positively rated their ability to engage with TV shows. Commenting on the research, Stella Medlicott, chief marketing officer at Red Bee Media, said: “There is no doubt that dual screening is here to stay. The findings from our research indicate that consumers are already using their smart devices to engage with TV content and this new behaviour represents a fantastic opportunity for broadcasters, platforms and content owners to take their engagement with viewers beyond the primary TV screen and monetise it.”
But second screen is not just an opportunity, it’s a high stakes game and to many a lot more than just about the device - so said Victor Basta, managing director of Magister Advisors, M&A advisors to the global technology industry. “Tablet wars are in fact no longer about hardware,” Basta said. “The big prize is control of an entire, hugely profitable ecosystem. Devices are fast becoming irrelevant and are trending towards zero profit and beyond.” Hardware, he insisted, was now simply a tool for enabling consumers to buy content and in his opinion will become as prosaic an element of the commercial relationship as a credit card. “Significantly, Apple's revenues from sales of content are growing faster than total revenues. We expect this trend to accelerate, Apple removing DVD drives from MacBooks forever encourages users to get content from iTunes, fuelling the value of the Apple ecosystem even more,” he said. Pointing to reasons as to how this has happened, Basta touched on an element that is often ignored, not just on second screens but for online video as a whole: user experience. Again looking at the mini, one notes
Seven things you need to know about second screen interaction, according to Alan Wolk, global lead analyst, KIT digital:
• Second screen interactions only matter when watching TV is our primary focus. • Viewers need an app that lets them change the channel.
• Our social graphs are random and rarely consist of people whose opinions we care about. • When the answer to ‘what’s on’ is ‘everything’ and the answer to ‘who’s on’ is ‘no one’, discovery becomes king.
• It’s the data, not the chatter.
• TV viewing is too random for a pure suggestion engine. • The next big shakeup in the television industry is going to be around interface.
that Apple design guru Sir Jony Ives now owns responsibility for user experience. This is a hugely significant appointment. Have we reached the stage where there’s no real competitive advantage in how devices look but how easily we can use them for what we want to experience on them, especially in the context of content? Watch out for others getting on board with experience. Capturing value in content from a second screen perspective means tapping into the user multitasking that is assumed, maybe dangerously, that goes on while people watch TV. A dangerous assumption, according to ABI Research senior analyst Michael Inouye, who said: “While many consumers today claim to use mobile and portable devices while watching TV, most of us are in actuality poor at multitasking. In many cases this means consumers are more acutely aware about the content on their portable device than the TV. While second screen advertising is not necessarily OTT content it does speak to the importance of targeting these connected devices that extend the reach of content beyond the TV.” Alfred Ruth, CTO at Videoplaza, is a whole lot more confident as to how this will pan out re multitasking but admits that there are significant other challenges standing in the way of monetisation: “Content consumption
Is mass availability of video capable
smartphones and tablets enough to ensure business success?
trends show that mobile-multitasking, and the use of these devices in conjunction with TV viewing, is already happening so there’s undoubtedly a huge opportunity here. A key challenge that still remains is the ability to recognise when the same user is on multiple devices - a tablet and mobile for example - because getting accurate reach numbers is key to a successful monetisation strategy. There’s also a challenge in terms of a lack of innovation around exploring the dual- screen opportunity.”
A lot of challenges but where are the solutions? A number of voices suggest that the problem is not technological per se but instead based around what service is offered to users - once you identify them and what device they are using. Said Ruth: “The interesting question here is how to identify the user: you need to provide a better reason than wanting to provide advertisers with reach numbers to get your users to opt-in to identifying themselves…What feature will you provide your users that makes it worthwhile for them to handover position data or identity that you can then use for targeting ads? That's the truly exciting conversation that we find ourselves having with a growing number of clients today.” A conversation, no doubt, that asks ‘show me the money’.
www.ibeweb.com l november/december 2012 l ibe l 7
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