Mar
17
Critical Mobile eCommerce Moves for Your Business – Part 10 of 10 – Mobile Television Marketing
Let us remember that Television continues to be the dominant mass media for marketing, regardless of all this new mobile technology.
So we’ll have to learn how to integrate the old giant and the new giant as they appear in the same neighborhood. It’s a two way street, with television being the powerhouse when it comes to high speed, high quality content delivery, and mobile providing more flexibility when it comes to “in the field” commerce transactions.
At the moment, television is beginning to provide some entertainment apps, such as those for the shows “Grays Anatomy” and “Ghost”. These apps react to signals from the shows as they are broadcast, causing reactions within the apps. The first reactions have been mainly entertainment related, but there is no reason that sweepstakes and other contests couldn’t be activated during shows.
As more television shows are provided through the internet and media servers, as well as more sophisticated set-top boxes, smart phones will gain the ability to affect television programming. Want different angles during a sporting event, different plot lines, or instant replays? Your smartphone will bring all that to you, as well as gameplay – play along with your favorite game shows in real time, with the chance to win real prizes.
Imagine being at a sporting event, and being able to show your friends where you’re sitting, while they are watching on TV. Or eventually, giving them the capability to see on video the attractions that YOU are looking at during an event.
The challenge is going to be bringing television to places it can’t go now, and bringing mobile eCommerce into video entertainment.
1. American Idol type competition shows. Instead of producing and broadcasting, ONE national show, throwing out most of the local auditions, these shows could produce multiple editions for local consumption. The power of this is the ability push local promotions to viewers through their televisions AND their smartphones.
If people are required to install and register show related apps, then geo-location allows businesses to serve up local related promotions.
2. Direct Viewer Contribution to Shows: Will Wright, the creator of the world’s most popular game franchise “The Sims”, has just launched a show (Bar Karma) that takes contributions from viewers with interactive devices. Scene concepts, lines of dialogue, and other ideas are taken in and evaluated for actual use during the show.
The show has major corporate sponsors, and due to the interactive application, viewers get double the marketing exposure that they get from an ordinary tv show.
3. Biometric Sensors: Microsoft’s new “Kinect” video gaming system, and body sensors on the latest Playstation consoles detect human movement and react to motion. Facial recognition technology is also advancing by leaps and bounds every year, with licensing for home consumer use no doubt coming soon.
This will give advertisers the ability to detect things like age and gender, to allow targeting of ads to viewers. And interactive responses will give viewers the ability to “play” with ads and contests during commercial breaks.
4. Live, interactive talent competitions: With higher quality video cameras, microphones, and higher speed bandwidth, the capability will come for viewers to actually be part of broadcast shows from their homes. Rather than being the next “YouTube” star, people with entertaining personalities will be “on the air” for all their friends and relatives to see on their own TVs.
5. Internet TV boxes: Both Apple and Google (along with Sony) have been dipping their toes in the delivery of interactive media to viewer’s televisions through internet connected hardware. The “Apple TV” and “Google TV” do a total end run around programming from the cable tv and satellite tv, providing their own content, and additional interactivity. The specific executions are still ironing out hiccups, but the rewards are well worth the battle.
Interactive television will take the concept of local cable “advertising” and explode it into a fully integrated network of shows, gaming, interaction, and real-time promotions.
This isn’t a projection for some distant future – this is all happening in bits and pieces all over the world – is your business ready to take advantage of it?
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