 | Issue: | EMEA 2012 |
| Article no.: | 6 | |
| Topic: | ‘Social TV’ | |
| Author: | Tullio Pirovano | |
| Title: | Senior VP Strategic Partnerships | |
| Organisation: | KITdigital | |
| PDF size: | 263KB |
About author
As a Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, EMEA for KITdigital, Tullio Pirovano is responsible for driving strategic sales and partnerships in EMEA to extend the company’s reach and revenues. He joined KIT digital through the acquisition of PolymediaSpA from TXT group, where he serves as CEO. PolymediaSpA was a leading software vendor and system integrator, specializing in Video Asset Management solutions and professional services for Broadcasters, Telcos& Media companies.At TXT group, Mr Pirovano was General Manager of TXT Polymedia, Executive Vice President and part of the Board of Directors of the group. As General Manager of TXT Polymedia, he was responsible for all the company’s activities including business development, sales and marketing, client operations, product development, P&L budgeting and forecasting.
Previously, Mr Pirovano spent 14 years at IBM, where he managed several software projects for important national and international customers, mainly in the field of data communication. During his tenure there, he was responsible for software development and sales support for Datavideo, a solution to broadcast data over a TV signal, thus establishing important relationships in the broadcasting field.
Tullio Pirovano graduated cum laude in physics from Milan University.
Article abstract
A Social Program Guide app is the combination of Social Media with the TV experience. At the Discovery Stage, social media provides help in decision-making, thus comments and reviews of TV programs help to choose what to watch. In the Watching stage, social activity is lower, depending on the type of program. Drama is regarded as low-interaction social type, while comedy and sport, not to mention breaks, are high-social types. At the Reviewing Stage, users can re-review the program and add comments. Real-time shared experience can be achieved by embedding comments, or ‘time coding’ for others to see them at the right moment, even when watching time-shifted video or Video-on-Demand. Such Social-TV apps enhance the users’ experience and provide opportunities for advertising.
Full Article
‘Social TV‘ is the industry’s #1 buzzword. It’s thrown at any solution that involves the internet and television. Current thinking (among Venture Capital experts anyway) seems to be that apps are the way to go, with contests and coupon deals as the primary revenue generation vehicles.
We see a different solution: a single, provider-based app that serves as both social program guide and as a remote control. This is tied to individual accounts, so that everyone in the family can access their own personal social input. This last point is one of the reasons we have so much faith in this approach. Handling that sort of data to advertisers can revolutionize the television industry, bringing in an even bigger cash flow, while changing the way ads are bought and sold.
Before I explain how that will work, it’s necessary to take a look at the actual process of watching TV. We’ve found that it can be broken down into three stages: Discovering, Watching and Reviewing, and they all feed on each other in a circular rather than linear fashion.
Stage 1: Discovering
The first question the viewer asks is always going to be ‘What should we (I) watch?’, and the first place a user will turn for that is the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) on the set top box… which makes it the perfect opportunity for a Social TV play.
The viewer is actively taking part in a ‘lean-in’ activity. They have not engaged with the programming yet. They are looking for advice. A large part of what has made today’s social media favorites so popular is that they help us in the decision-making process. Facebook and Twitter help us decide what to read, which YouTube videos to watch, what news stories to follow. Yelp helps us decide what restaurants to go to. FourSquare helps us determine which bars are hopping. All this information comes to us at the point where we are looking to make an actionable decision. Gathering information from the social web will be a huge boon to anyone in the Discovery phase. What shows are my friends watching now? What have they watched, recorded and/or downloaded recently? What are most people in my town watching? What about most people my age?
Let’s look at how that might play out in real life, circa 2012. Your MVPD (Multichannel Video Platform Distributor) would provide a Programme Guide app that works on your tablet or smartphone. It would immediately let you customize the default view to something more manageable than all 1,598 channels on offer. It would allow you to see, in real time, what shows were getting the most social activity. You would then be able to see what people are actually saying, tapping into Twitter and Facebook feeds that show real time conversation. You’d even be able to respond to and share those comments without leaving the app. You’d be able to save a show to your DVR and rent VOD movies with just one click. You could even get in touch with customer service.
Each show would have its own robust page, with preview video, photos and stats. You would be able to see reviews and ratings from friends and community. There would also be ample opportunity for targeted advertising, both from the networks, who’d promote their own shows, to brands, who could sponsor previews or launch special features. Since all this would happen before the viewer actually starts watching, before the ‘lean back experience‘ starts, they’re not going to mind it. It will feel like research, not an interruption, particularly if we look at where the experience happens – it often occurs long before the actual viewing.
There are many availableapps that contain mostorsome of these features, but they are not tied to any particular cable provider. Imagine how much more useful they would be if they were, and you could download, rent, buy, and get customer service questions answered and give input to the cable company- from the same app.
A notable thing about the new crop of Social TV apps: they highlight the huge volume of chatter about TV shows. It’s a constant flow that we’re not aware of, because it often comes from different demographics. For instance, teenagers – a far more diverse group than the tech/media crowd we often associate with Twitter. This is another reason for embedding Social TV in the Decision Making process – the behaviour is already there. People comment about television shows in large numbers. A Social TV app would harness that behaviour and make relevant data useful to other viewers.
Stage 2: Watching
Once we have actually made the decision, it is time to watch. Watching is a “lean back” experience. How much we want to lean back depends on the content: sports programs, timeouts and other breaks in the action, can give us ample opportunity to ‘lean in’ and engage with our peers.By contrast, take a new episode of a crime drama. For many people, this will demand their full concentration. They may want to discuss it at some point, but not while the plot is unfolding. This is not saying that we need to give up on Social TV interactions during the Watching stage – just that we need to make distinctions based on the type of content.
We have broken TV programmes into three categories: High, Mid and Low Social. High Social are shows that have the most commentary during the show, whereas Low Social shows tend to have most of their social activity after the show. To examine the categories more closely, dramas and action shows are Low Social programs: we’re engrossed in the shows and don’t want to talk to anyone while they’re on. The action is continuous and there are no logical places to take a break and start talking. Comedies are Mid Social. It is fun to share the jokes and most comedies don’t demand your full attention. There are no breaks either, just ebbs and flows in the plot line. Reality Dramas, shows, like Jersey Shore, are also Mid Social. The combination of slow-paced scenes and ’I can’t believe this!’ moments makes conversation easier, but we’re always watching for a pull on our attention. Reality Game Shows (Amazing Race, the Idol franchise, etc.) and Sports are both High Social. There are defined breaks and the winner/loser dynamic makes for easy conversation.
The biggest challenge of the Watching stage is not that people don’t like to chat during CSI Miami. Asynchronous viewing patterns mean that they rarely watch it at the same time. The trend towards on-demand viewing, whether through DVR, VOD or services like Netflix, is growing exponentially. We cannot expect Social Program Guide app users to watch shows at the same time. Fortunately, there are several technologies that allow me to insert comments attached to specific time codes on the recording. That way, a friend can watch along and see comments, seemingly in real time. This can even be a group experience, where each new user adds comments or likes someone else’s comment.
Keeping the different ways people watch TV in mind, we foresee the transformation of the traditional commercial break into ‘Social Intermissions’. When we watch TV at home, we get in the habit of allowing commercials to create regular breaks. With DVRs and VOD, those breaks no longer exist and so we turn to the ‘Pause’ button. Scheduled breaks, rebranded ‘Social Intermissions’, may be welcomed by consumers. Rather than blaring out jingles, brands would use this time to engage viewers with the content they are watching, or at the very least with some sort of social action they can take on the iPad (a poll, a game). This may also ameliorate the reluctance some people have to using social media when they have company: if you are sitting with friends watching a TV show,you are going to be sharing your comments with them, not with random strangers. A planned break that encourages everyone in the room to go online and engage in something social together will make that sort of activity more palatable.
Stage 3: Reviewing
Right after watching a show, we are more likely to review it, when details are fresh. A well-designed Social TV app can prompt that behaviour – either by asking you to rate a show, or utilizing a gaming model that rewards users for ratings and reviews. The app can also aggregate opinions and comments from the social web and review sites like Lost Tomatoes. This adds another metric for users to refer to in the Decision Making stage.
There is use for the time code technology discussed earlier here too: users can be given the option to ‘Re-watch and Comment’ on a show, so they can go back and insert their comments now that they’ve seen how the program ends. This presents great opportunity for advertisers: the app can present ways for users to click through for more information on a product they’ve seen advertised on the show, or a product they’ve seen via a product placement. A brand could sponsor this recap. Viewers will be receptive to this approach since they have chosen to engage with the recap. Brands can get very specific data on who is buying, when and why.
This loops us back to the Decision Making process. A well designed Social TV app will provide other users with data about those reviews, sliced and diced by age, location, gender and other identifiers. A key data point will be activity from the viewer’s own social graphs. When I open my Social Program Guide app, I want to see what shows people are talking about. But mostly I want to see what shows my friends are watching, which ones they’re planning to watch and which shows they felt strongly enough about to comment on, so that we can discuss it next time we meet.
In real life or online, it is going to make TV a lot more social.
