CES 2012: The world of TV is an exciting one!
Marco Bertozzi, managing director EMEA at VivaKi, reveals his highlights from this year’s CES and talks about the implications for the TV industry…
This month executives from business, government, entertainment, automotive, consumer electronics and every major industry converged on the 2012 International CES to experience new ways of doing business at the world’s largest consumer technology trade-show.
Everyone told me that Las Vegas was a crazy city and CES even more so but no-one did it justice. This was my first visit to both and no-one could have prepared me for either. The scale of the city and the event itself beggars belief.
The buzz around the event is incredible with every major tech company represented (except for Apple of course) and on a scale I have never seen before.
The 2012 International CES was the largest in the event’s 44 year history, with a record number of more than 3,100 exhibitors across the largest show floor ever – 1.861 million net square feet of exhibit space – and drawing a record of more than 153,000 attendees, including more than 34,000 international attendees.
More than 20,000 new products were launched and it has become the second largest event for agency groups with Levy, Sorrell, Wren and Roth all in attendance. From VivaKi alone we had over 450 clients, partners and agency execs turn out.
Although there was an enormous amount covered at the show, the theme that stood out for me was that of converged TV – and the challenges we all face in this space. Let me start by giving you some of my personal highlights of the TV space at CES, followed by a look at the implications for us as an industry…
The Rise of Apps
CES proved that TV is no longer a ‘lean back’ channel surfing experience but rather a ‘lean in’ interactive experience, designed to draw you in and pull you from your stupor. TV is being assaulted by set top boxes, app stores, satellite companies. It’s no longer able to sit quietly in the corner of your room. It has to be your communicator (through Skype), your music system, your social media entry point, picture frame, cinema etc… And before looking at specifics of who was showing what at CES, I have to say the point I was left with, above all, was that the role of the main broadcasters and channels seems antiquated and slow. They run the risk of being left behind a very fast moving wave of tech.
The TV manufacturers are all looking for an angle on how consumers interact with their devices. Microsoft want you to interact with their TVs via Kinect through movement, LG want you to speak to their devices and have created a unique remote control that acts more like a cursor.
The first thing that struck me about the LG TV is that it is now all about apps and not about the linear TV stream. These apps will enable catch-up TV, movie downloads, Facebook, LinkedIn, games etc… And it is this vast array of ways to interact with content that leaves me with the feeling the main broadcasters have a big job on their hand. Below is an image of the LG TV with the aforementioned apps:
The image above also shows how advertising is incorporated (on the left hand side) and just how interactive advertising can now be. If you click on the ads you can be taken through to full video content, websites or Facebook pages. The opportunities are impressive and endless.
LG is not the only manufacturer to have led with the app approach. Nearly all the leading companies used apps in one way or another. Below is an image of one of the Samsung TVs. They really stood out as being very impressive both in terms of design and functionality. The image shows the social apps in the TV, and whereas previously they have been a little clunky they are now seamlessly integrated so you can talk directly with people, tweet, or communicate on Facebook, alongside TV programming. The second picture below shows an example of that in action. Social TV is going to be huge and will again swing the stats away from dual behaviours / screens whilst watching TV.
Facial recognition and personalisation
Right now if we want to personalise advertising through TV it is down to the very early attempts and basic targeting already being undertaken by the likes of Virgin or Sky. If we want to measure TV viewing in the family we have to press buttons or, in some cases in the US, people are still filling in diaries – and a multi-billion pound industry relies on this.
What about a future when the TV recognises you as you sit down? And recognises whether you are with other people and whether you are doing something else. If you’re distracted maybe the advertiser pays less!? All this and more is coming with the new TVs.
Facial recognition was a big feature at CES. Imagine logging in and your TV suggesting the Sopranos episode you missed? Or playing programmes that your friends have been watching? Or even shows ads based on those you have previously watched all the way through? Facial recognition is going to transform the viewing experience and again will present you with a myriad of entertainment opportunities before you even get to the first channel you would normally watch!
The battle of the software
So LG and Samsung have built their own platforms for all of this to run on, as has Microsoft and of course Google. Apple will have their infrastructure and others will too. Sony was the more open-minded of the manufacturers present and turned to Android to provide their operating system. So where does that leave us? Well it leaves us with the same argument we have always had – open vs. closed.
In the world of TV that debate favours closed with LG, Samsung, Microsoft, Google and Apple all running their own platforms. This is crazy in reality and a brain fade for advertisers and users. Interestingly this does not stop at the TV. Sony, Samsung and Apple in particular are all trying to wrap up your living room and online experience, trying to get you to link tablets with TV with mobile, that’s a big win.
However, app and online companies are open – all of whom are working to be available everywhere (email, movies, social etc). Those companies are having the time of their lives with all this innovation.
Sony went a step further by connecting their PSP to their TVs, tablets and phones, meaning as a user you can get anything everywhere. A gamer who was on the PS at home could travel to work and turn on their PSP and it would remotely fire up their home system and stream all the gaming to their handheld – which enables them to carry on exactly where they were. It’s a cool piece of work from Sony (and needed). I felt their TV and tablet experience was behind the competition.
Measurement
This advancement leaves us with a problem. On just one TV set, or should I just say large screen, we have social media, photography, communication with tools such as Skype and Facetime, we have movies and TV shows enabled by Apps, the weather, an e-commerce hub and so on and yet somewhere in there people are watching TV in a linear fashion. Or are they?
We have all this on top of different platforms and players, across thousands of TVs. How as an advertiser can you a) be expected to navigate this and b) measure it using current methods? Let’s face it – panels, as we know them, are over. They are basic and cannot fully give the advertiser a faith that they are paying for the right information. There will be ways of consolidating advertising by companies such as YuMe but on top of that everyone will be selling advertising in their apps or via video resellers and exchanges and we have to add all this up? We urgently need a universal tracking initiative such as online ad-serving to at least pick up a big chunk of those metrics. Outside of that the role of the TV panel either needs to reinvent itself, and fast, or die.
And finally…
Oh my, the TVs looked amazing! They are getting slimmer and slimmer and brighter and brighter. Samsung revealed their 4K, which basically means 4 x HD. The picture quality is unlike anything I have ever seen. The innovation is incredible and mind boggling, but I am so glad I got to see it first-hand. The world of TV is an exciting one!