Today’s TV industry and viewing experience is unlike anything the media landscape has seen before. Gone are the days when families would sit together in the living room, watching the same show and accompanying advertisements. Now it’s all about personalization and, with the rise in multiple screens, it’s never been easier for each person in a household to watch what he or she wants without having to compromise.
According to Nielson, the average U.S. family owns four digital media devices (smartphones, laptops, tablets, etc.). With the combination of increasingly popular Internet-connected TVs, it has become easy to view content from a variety of screens. Also according to Nielson, 80 percent of people who own tablets and smartphones engage with them while watching TV. With so many different screens and viewers, who are constantly splitting or shifting their focus, it is imperative to deliver personalized targeted content. It is equally as important to provide customized advertising in order to monetize in this media landscape — a task impossible to accomplish with the traditional broadcast TV, cable and IPTV model. These models have no means of identifying with the users accessing these systems and consuming content. As such, there is little or no opportunity to tailor each user’s experience or increase advertising revenue via targeted advertising.
While the TV viewing experience has evolved rapidly in the last few years, adjusting to the needs of the consumer, many service providers and operators are still playing catch-up. MobiTV is one of the few companies to disrupt the industry by offering technologies and integrated platforms supporting multiple profiles and identifying with the people behind their devices. IP networks, coupled with unicast media delivery and device intelligence, now make it possible to deliver device- and network-aware content that is individualized and relevant to the consumer.
Once operators establish the basic necessities required by today’s content-hungry consumer, the next step is ensuring monetization. Quality content is still a key driver of usage, pay-TV revenue and ratings, and advertising revenue; however, it’s hard for a pay-TV provider to differentiate its offerings and acquire customers purely based on its content. Service providers must find other means of monetizing their investments. This is where technologies driving personalized experiences via second-screen engagement, contextually aware advertising and unified communications can be leveraged to propel higher average revenues per user. Directing tailored advertisements to a viewer’s second-screen device is especially important; this practice keeps viewers engaged, even if they think they’ve tuned out traditional TV ads.
With the multitude of TV viewing options now available to consumers, it’s clear that companies understand the need to provide viewers with more flexibility when it comes to what they watch, when and on what device; however, the monetization models for most services still need to be updated. Once service providers begin to increase adoption the innovative technology available to them and fully capitalizing on TV-everywhere capabilities, we’ll see this model of personalized and engaging content take its place as the new gold standard for pay TV.
Charlie Nooney serves as chairman and CEO of MobiTV.
