- One of the hottest areas in emerging technology at the moment is the scramble to provide content and services to what has become known as the second screen.
- Surveys from Nielsen and Yahoo have shown that more than 80% of people also interact with a smartphone or a tablet while they are watching television.
- Whether this interaction has anything to do with the content that is being watched is uncertain but the activity is enough to encourage a whole host of start-up companies to monetise that usage.
- The idea is fairly simple with the application aiming to add another dimension to the media on the screen.
- Additional content like information on the actors, behind the scenes clips and conversation between users are the kind of services being dreamt up.
- However, the execution is little bit more complicated as the application needs to synchronise with the broadcast meaning that the co-operation and involvement of the broadcaster is a necessity.
- This is why Sky and Comcast are partners of Zeebox and Time Warner is in GetGlue with Miso being backed by Google Ventures.
- This looks like a great way to add value to the TV experience as further information and offers related to the content on the main screen is highly targeted advertising which has been shown to be many many times more effective than blanket banner advertising.
- The problem with this is the longer term nature of television.
- Sitting and watching a program at a pre-set time is likely to become a thing of the past and slowly but surely the content oligopoly is likely to break-down.
- If the world moves to video on demand, then the role of these applications will be less clear.
- The sort of data and service they provide could easily be packed along with the video download and provided by the content provider making these sorts of services obsolete.
- However, what is mostly likely is that these start-ups will end being acquired and then used to provide these value added content and services by the content provider.
- This is a hot new area but it is currently focusing on a use case that has an expiry date.
- Look for those that could be acquired or have a realistic plan to deal with that eventuality.
Meta Platforms Q1 24 – Bad ...
25 April 2024