In the last year, Sling Media has been focusing on developing and tweaking apps for its device as well as new features for its apps, the company’s spokesperson Brian Jaquet explained in an interview with Beet.TV. The service “slings” 2.3 billion miles of content each week as it delivers programming to consumers remotely, he told us.
The new box integrates with existing entertainment systems and should let users access any of their TV programming and recorded content on a personal computer, tablet or phone. Sling said its users can set up the new box with a mobile device using the Slingplayer app on either an iPhone, iPad or Android phone. In addition, users can watch on a second TV anywhere using Apple TV and Roku. Sling Media also introduced a Windows app earlier this year.
We spoke with Jaquet at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year and we are republishing the video today.
More on today’s news reported in the Wall Street Journal.
]]>iSpot.tv tracks TV ads in real time as they air on TV and connects that to what consumers do on their devices in response to the ads, essentially measuring how paid media impacts earned media. In a recent 30-day period, iSpot.TV tracked 313 million interactions to TV ads across 44 million unique consumers. The interactions fell into three buckets, Fuller says. Consumers searched for something related to the ad to the tune of about 1 million searches a day. They also went online to look up and watch the ad, or they shared the ad on Facebook or Twitter. Brands can then overlay this data with the performance of the campaign to see how consumer reaction drives their ads and those of the competition, he says.
]]>The second-screen app, known as Echo, is designed to blend TV viewing and tablet interaction. “We want to build an experience across two screens,” Cormican says. To achieve that, the top section of the tablet app appears as an extended piece of video from the TV with the rest of the screen a “content feed” for touch interaction. “It feels like one single experience across both screens,” he explains. Features include letting users peek at a sporting event on another channel while watching a game, for instance.
“Many users have these devices in their hands already and they are capable of delivering wonderful experiences and we think they can be reproduced for the TV,” he says.
]]>“We provide viewability metrics at the site and domain level. For a marketer those are actionable and they can turn a site on or off if they don’t like the viewability,” he tells us. Video viewability still means different things to different companies, ranging from a viewer clicking to another page, to a video running under the fold. “Viewability helps you understand if anyone is watching the ads marketers are paying a lot of money for. You need to see what is going on at the site level…Marketers should also want to see player size. Player size is a dead giveaway for fake preroll,” he says. For example, many 300 by 250 pre-rolls are video autoplays in a banner, Wilson says.
In general, of the impressions substantiated in an ad exchange buy, about 40% are viewable and 60% are not. “We have a lot of chances to increases this understanding and eliminate the bad players and rewarding the good ones,” he says.
Here is the company’s press release on the product offering.
]]>Speaking with Beet.TV at the Consumer Electronics Show, media agency Mediacom‘s USA CEO Sasha Savic gets excited about the prospects for brands.
“The depth of intrusion of new technologies in to every sphere of our lives … is just amazing,” Savic says.
“When you start talking about your kitchen, basic functions in your life relating to movement, it’s just amazing. It is going to truly change our lives – we nee to be ready for that.”
]]>In this insightful interview with Beet.TV at the Consumer Electronics Show, ad agency GroupM’s chairman Irwin Gotlieb explains higher-resolution TVs are being driven by a need to eliminate pixellation for close-quarters viewing on ever-larger sets in small rooms like those in Tokyo, Japan.
“You need higher resolution and a bit of screen curvature to compensate. If you use the tv the way we do here, you don’t need those things – yet,” he says.
Gotlieb reckons the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan could be a tipping point. “The Japanese government has already declared they won’t be covering the Olympics in HD, nor will they be covering it in 4K – they will, in fact be covering, it in something called 8K.
“There are already 8K sets on the (CES) floor. It creates all sorts of problems from a workflow standpoint, from a bandwidth standpoint. But problems exist so we can overcome them.”
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We spoke with him at recently at roof-top party at CES thrown by MediaLink.
Beet.TV will be back in Cannes this June. Hope to see you there!
]]>“You have to be really in real-time,” says Tim Schigel, founder of ShareThis, whose near-ubiquitous green button lets users share content through umpteen online services.
“People are interested a given topic maybe for just a few minutes or a few hours. If you’re not relevant to them at that time, you’ve missed an opportunity. The challenge is producing content that is brand-safe.”
Nowadays, ShareThis is using its sharing data – with over a billion social signals per month – to target marketers’ advertising.
We taped this segment at the Mindshare Client Huddle.
]]>Given this growth, Domino’s is focusing on a “mobile-first mindset” that takes into account all the different mobile channels and devices and how consumers use them, including mobile services in cars, like Ford Sync, he says. “We see that evolving at a face pace,” he says. Domino’s generates more than $1 billion a year in digital orders.
For more insight into how Domino’s is marketing in the mobile medium, as well as challenges the brand has encountered, check out this video interview. We taped this segment at the Mindshare Client Huddle.
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Iris integrates with all major video players, and any ad server or ad network, he says. “We are platform agnostic. The company is positioned so multichannel networks…with their own brands and owned-and-operated Web mobile sites can generate better ROI and increase video views,” Garthwaite says. The company recently raised $1.7 million in angel funding and aims to expand into international markets this year, and grow its publisher base in news, sports and lifestyle, he says.
]]>“The promise of addressable television, which has been worked on for over a decade, actually will begin to take off in 2014 in a major way,” Videology CEO Scott Ferber tells Beet.TV
“We have the pipe to deliver a different ad to the set-top box in the living room that my kids are watching versus a set-top box in the bedroom that my wife is watching, even if they’re watching the same TV programs”
Ferber reckons a handful of multi-national advertising brands may have the scale to buy such ads directly, but advises most smaller brands to do so via agencies. Videology helps advertisers deliver across screen types.
Videology’s report on the state of the sector, authored by Forrester and just published, polled 150 advertising decision makers and found:
We’re able to pull in data from over 15 million set-top boxes that are all connected, aggregate that data in a privacy-compliant way and then optimize that against advertisers’ best potential consumer,” AT&T AdWorks’ ad sales VP Chris Monteferrante tells Beet.TV.
“The way it was done before was (targeting by) age and gender. We can take age, gender and two or three other specific demographics. We can do a specific match against our subscriber base. From that base, we can segment that out and look at the behavioral data in those specific households and apply those with our predictive modelling.”
“We’re finding that audience – it may be on HGTV on Thursday nights in primetime – and booking that specifically.”
Beet.TV spoke with Monteferrante at the Mindshare Client Huddle during the Consumer Electronics Show.
]]>“Marketers, back in the day, wanted to drive traffic online,” Vibrant Media global accounts and marketing SVP Ariff Quli tells Beet.TV during the Consumer Electronics Show.
“The goals have changed for marketers. It’s less about that ‘one-stop, shop click’ – it’s about expanding upon more of a relationship with your consumer, a deep relationship that’s more of a romantic style to really engage the user. That’s what’s really key to this year.”
Quli’s Vibrant Media has certainly seen it all. Founded in 2000, the company is best known for its InText ad format, turning web text in to hot links to brand destinations. Nowadays, those keywords can expand in to full-page brand takeovers, too.
]]>“We see a trend to shorter video and that being an art form,” Bitterman says. “We are recruiting for content creators to work at Mindshare that have rich Vine profolios because there is a science and art to communciating in short form to consumers, and those who do it well can be helpful for our clients.”
In November, the average length for online video was 4.7 minutes overall, down from 5.4 minutes the year-ago period, according to comScore.
Mindshare is also focused on so-called “adaptive marketing” so that it can help brands react to daily shifts in the market when necessary. About 70% of a client’s budget is usually allocated to paid media, and Bitterman says his goal is to leverage some of those paid dollars in a real-time world using adaptive marketing. Mindshare has implemented daily practices to monitor each client’s media channels and real-time conversations and determine whether to make daily changes, he says. “We are enabling ourselves in the moment to move with speed,” he says.
This video is part of a series produced by Beet.TV of the Mindshare Client Huddle.
]]>Chirpify is a start-up hoping to close that circle, by letting consumers buy or otherwise express interest in products using just hashtags in social media they already frequent.
“We’re letting people use social to #buy, #enter or #reserve or express an interest in that content or product,” Chirpify chief revenue officer Kevin Tate tells Beet.TV at the Mindshare Client Huddle at the Consumer Electronics Show.
“Social has become this participation layer … and hashtags are the glue for that conversation. the ability to bring a conversion opportunity to that conversation is what brands get excited about. We’ve worked with 20 to 30 big brands over the last six to nine months.”
Other uses of Chirpify have been to #donate money to charity. Use cases involve TV advertisers but also a range of other brands, Tate says. Although conversion is as simple as tweeting, buyers must be registered with Chirpify and have a payment method plugged in.
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“Premium publishers in online video … they’re sold out,” Ferber tells Beet.TV during a sit-down at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Ferber says advertiser imperatives change drastically with consumer context: “I’m a male who’s 44 years old, who lives in Bethesda, MA. But if I’m watching Barney with my daughter who’s 7 years old… that’s a very different Scott Ferber. Contextual relevance, even though I’m the same audience member, matters.”
That is why Ferber thinks content-based ad buys will go on ruling over spot-based, super-targeted ones. “If people shift the pendulum to all-audience, no content, then that might put a lot of pressure on premium publishers and that would then suggest that the only outlet for them is in the spot market,” he says. “But that’s a pretty big shift and data we’ve seen suggests that’s not happen any time soon – or ever, possibly.”
]]>New York-headquartered Tremor offers advertisers its service that improves short online video pre-roll ads, which typically get shovelled from linear TV ad slots, with interactive rollovers and other enhancements.
“We saw an 8% lift between people who just watch the ad and increase intent to purchase, versus people who watched it and engaged with it,” Tremor’s market strategy head Doron Wesly tells Beet.TV at the Consumer Electronics Show.
Wesly says typical intent to purchase amongst viewers of TV ads for national brands comes in around 2%.
“We want to see if there’s a honeymoon phase or if it’s something we can sustain with technology. So far, it’s been relatively stable,” he adds.
]]>“We strongly believe in the cloud, it can change the industry,” Rovi’s product development VP Thierry Lehartel tells Beet.TV at the Consumer Electronics Show.
At the show, Rovi announced Remote Access Services, an upgrade to its existing Cloud Services which lets pay-TV operators give viewers channel-changing, DVR-setting remote control functionality from their mobile devices.
“It’s about maintaining the touchpoint throughout everyone’s daily experience,” Lehartel adds.
“Progressively migrating your users to a new world that delights them and migrating your infrastructure to something that is super-efficient… those two things are the ingredients of success for operators.”
]]>Those sort of relationships can help Mindshare provide and distribute a range of content quickly to the market. “We are building out tools and processes to help us deliver for our clients in real time,” he says.
Mindshare also has partnerships with Twitter and LinkedIn to amplify messages. “Our clients are kind of big, we are kind of big, so we look for some smaller, quicker partners and we let scale come from partners like Twitter.”
For more insight into Mindshare’s approach to real-time marketing and how to meet client’s needs, check out this video interview. We recorded this session at the Mindshare Client Huddle.
]]>That’s why many auto makers, often accused of loading their dashes with old technology, are now turning their systems in to future-proof mobile mini-computers, which receive frequent updates via the cellular cloud.
“There has been a bit of a space race,” says media agency GroupM’s chairman Irwin Gotlieb in this fascinating sit-down with Beet.TV.
“Apple convinced both BMW and Mercedes to go with them. Google has always been there with Audi.In the last few weeks, General Motors has signed on with Google. Hyundai and Honda and, I believe several other automotives will go with Google.
“We will have most major manufacturers around the world likely aligned with one of the two guys. Services will be delivered in a manner that is consistent, pretty much, across all these vehicles.”
GM’s Chevrolet has been amongst the earliest adopters of this “thin client” approach, its MyLink system being just a mobile-connected touchscreen that takes advantage of iOS in particular. Apple is still yet to unveil its previously-announced iOS In The Car system in reality. Google announced its Open Automotive Alliance in January. Both initiatives are set to come to fruition in 2014.
Gotlieb reckons the mobile connected car will change the meaning of cars themselves: Initially, it’s about ensuing you don’t do certain things while you’re driving. Ten years from now, it’s going to be about ensuring you can do whatever you want while the car’s driving itself.”
]]>At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, Rovi trailed two new products aiming to help advertisers out. Ad Optimizer and Promotion Optimizer take in multiple data feeds to help advertisers figure out how to plan their spending.
“Today, there are massive amounts of data sets available,” Rovi product management director Akhil Parekh tells Beet.TV. “We not only know what consumers are watching on TV, we also now know what they’re doing off TV.
“Our platform can ingest all kinds of data (and) combine that with proprietary algorithms that identify what ads you want to run, when, on your inventory.
“Big data analytics will really change the world of advertising.”
]]>SMG does this by working with Twitter and analyzing the tweet patterns around a show, such as when people tweet and how that correlates to ads running in a program, she says. In addition, SMG has paired up with online video measurement firm Visible Measures to track data and trigger points around video and the role it plays in social. “We saw a massive opportunity to build an earned media planning tool…to build out our paid reach curve and make strategic decisions based on that,” she tells us. Leveraging social data can help marketers better understand sharing behaviors in consumers. SMG inked a deal in April with Twitter giving it access to Twitter research, data and analysis.
For more insight into how data is powering social media planning, check out this video interview.
]]>Also in in the interview, she talks about the success and relevance of the AOL tech brands, Engadget and TechCrunch and calls this a “golden age” for the company’s tech publications.
We interviewed her at the AOL/Engadget Awards event at CES.
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Akamai and Qualcomm think one solution is to cache popular digital content in the home or office. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Qualcomm’s Atheros showed off its IPQ “smart gateway”, a router device running Akamai software which “prepositions” bandwidth-heavy content.
That’s engineer speak for intelligently cacheing files so that users beyond the “last mile” (ie. a home or workplace) need not call on the live internet multiple times to download.
“We all know how painful it is when that new big update comes out from iOS or Android … or it’s primetime between 4pm and 9pm and everyone’s trying to get access to their videos or play their games,” Akamai chief strategist Kris Alexander tells Beet.TV.
“You can have your movies, all your software updates, the latest games all there and not have to go all the way back up to the internet … You have immediate access to all of this. It can provide a lot of benefits to the ISPs and carriers.”
Akamai is betting hard-pressed internet networks will be keen to push repetitious distribution out to groups of users themselves, to avoid multiple transmissions an save bandwidth as the demands from higher-resolution uses grows.
]]>“With the picture being four times the resolution, you’d think that would take up four times the bandwidth and make it very difficult for the broadcasters to send it to you,” Rovi’s product management director Hans Baumgartner tells Beet.TV.
“But, using a new encoding standard called HEVC, we’re able to compress that picture in to about the same size as a current HDTV broadcast.”
Rovi’s DivX standard began offering HEVC-compressed production and playback in 2013. During CES, Rovi announced Sharp would use this capability in its next line of Aquos TVs and Blu-ray players.
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