TV Everywhere and mobile accessibility are transforming TV viewing habits, and companies need to work hard to keep up, said speakers at TV of Tomorrow’s fourth annual East Coast conference held this week in New York City.

Speakers such as Jeremy Helfand, Adobe’s VP of video monetization, and David Lyle, National Geographic Channel’s CEO, joked about those few viewers who still watch TV in a traditional fashion while rattling off statistics about TV’s recent and radical transformation.

In the past year alone, tablet viewing has increased 150%, while TV Everywhere authentication, which allows viewers to watch their subscription TV on mobile devices, has risen 240% year-to-date, said Helfand.

With this rapid acceleration of alternative viewing methods, and more than 50% of content viewed online, companies such as Adobe say they must keep pace with consumers’ changing expectations.

To that end, the TV industry is paying attention to four important areas: simplicity, content ubiquity, discovery and personalization to meet consumer demands, said Adobe’s Helfland in opening remarks.

Along the lines of simplicity, eliminating steps from the authentication process is crucial to retaining customers, who expect one-click access to content streaming the way they often have with e-commerce sites, such as Amazon. Consumers he added, no longer differentiate between screens and have come to anticipate equal access to content on all of their devices, from tablets to cell phones.

Discovery and personalization — two somewhat aligned ideas — popped up elsewhere in the conference. For example, Jinni announced an iPad app called “My TV & Movie Guide,” which filters and recommends content to users based on their tastes and moods.

Helfand also said integrating social media and new discovery mechanisms should be baked in to programming to help personalize each user’s experience, along the lines of the individualized experiences consumers get with Amazon.com or Pandora Radio.

NatGeo’s Lyle said the channel is working to produce its first-screen content so that it connects directly with viewers.

For example, when Jason Silva (pictured above) hosts the channel’s highest rated show, “Brain Games,” Silva speaks conversationally to viewers, posing questions and encouraging them to test the brain games packed into every episode. These games, backed up by second-screen games on the channel’s website, give viewers a way to engage with the programming before, during and after the show.

Ending his presentation by teasing a new programming event about the International Space Station, Lyle showed the conference National Geographic’s call to viewers to “say hello to the astronauts” by posting “selfies” while waving at the camera. This very simple call to action, he said may be “corny, but effective,” giving everyone a chance to be in space. The event goes live next summer.

While viewers’ TV habits have come along way in a short time, most owners of smart TVs and other technological gadgets are still learning. Some 85% of smart-TV owners “use them dumb,” Lyle said, not taking full advantage of their capabilities.

At the end of his keynote address, Lyle answered an audience member’s question about about how National Geographic measures the success of its interactive features.

“Click-throughs and time-spent,” he answered, “It is not an exact science, but the person who figures out the connection between ratings and social wins a prize.”

Tags:


  Save as PDF