While the software is far from perfect (most screens are without an internet connection), a lot of screens now offer the prospect of live, dynamic campaigns where brands can engage their audience with richer, more relevant content / advertising. In a world that is always on, digital OOH media allows brands to make real-time updates to copy and creative content, and offers location/time-based solutions to marketers who want to target a specific group or demographic at a key moment.

The opportunities are now out there and the onus is on brands to make the most of them. More often than not however, the media isn’t being used to full effect. The power of ‘live’ is by no means a recent revelation to media owners or brands. Brands recognize that ‘live’ gives them the forum to create a closer relationship with their consumers and have identified digital OOH as a platform that can offer the kind of flexibility needed to create such a campaign. While well aware of the potential power live has, the concept itself is still very much in its infancy and this tends to be where the problem lies.

The future lies in the integration and more importantly aggregation of social media content

The first step is where to find live content. The rise of social media has been a real game changer and brands now have access to big pools of data in real-time. As a result many have decided to dip their toes in. Over a year ago Coke Zone implemented a Twitter campaign on the iconic Piccadilly sign, spreading the Christmas cheer by streaming tweets sent to @cokezone. Europcar’s #myextrahour campaign in June 2011 streamed tweets in a similar manner and for Mother’s Day just gone, Entertainment One’s #BreakingDawnMum campaign gave people the opportunity to have their tweets streamed on the iconic Ram Vision screen at Glow, Bluewater. While a year ago this level of interactivity and live content was relatively new and exciting, simply streaming twitter or Facebook feeds soon grows dull for consumers. Twitter feeds can be seen everywhere now and numerous brands have used them in their digital OOH campaigns. Figures show that 64% of tweets are either ignored or actively disliked and so brands need to be careful not to simply transfer what is on Twitter to the big screen.

Encouraging people to interact with your brand when they are stood in front of your advert and rewarding them by publishing their tweet or post in real time as Dove did with their latest campaign, is admittedly a great way to engage with consumers and create a campaign that is continuously relevant to the audience in front of it. Even so, brands need to begin to be more imaginative in how they use and present this live data and content in order to keep people interested. The novelty of seeing tweets on a screen, even if they are your own, will soon wear off.

Creativity must stay at the forefront of all digital OOH campaigns

To avoid digital OOH campaigns becoming just another stream of social media content that people ignore, brands must make sure that they invest time into aggregating and curating the data properly. Information they publish must inform or engage people in some way, be it through an insight, trend, story or brilliant piece of creative. Hence it’s not the data itself that’s interesting but what you do with it – the huge rise in high quality infographics and visualizations demonstrates the importance of finding that insight to communicate visually to get the engagement.

Good creative is something that digital OOH campaigns are at particular risk of losing as brands rely on other possibilities made available by this platform. Being dynamic in itself doesn’t make the creative interesting. Instead, the focus should be on how they can use this live content and live media platform to further enhance a creative idea.

Difficulties in measuring the ROI of digital OOH along with the fact that many brands do not fully grasp how to use the platform to its full capabilities has meant that companies have often been wary of investing too much time and money in this area. The opportunities for live, localized and dynamic advertising are there and evidence suggests that consumers feel positively towards digital OOH advertising, however brands must invest more of their marketing budget and be imaginative, insightful and relevant if they are to make the most out of this platform.

Some nice examples of effective/ imaginative digital OOH campaigns:

Heineken Twitter powered map for UCL final

British Airways – Caribbean Destination Campaign

Previously, data mining and analyzing was confined to backroom geeks but the targeted marketing opportunities it now provides means that it has moved into the front room alongside creatives, no longer simply influencing ideas but producing them too. Even in its raw form, data can make unbelievably persuasive campaigns as data mash-ups, live feeds and infographics.

Great data speaks for itself, which is why it is not just the advertising industry that can benefit from the wave of live content now available. The Metro’s daily double-page spread (Metro In Focus) and the Guardian Data Blog are both great examples of how live content and data can be used to create clear, concise and persuasive journalism. In advertising, a number of brands have seized this opportunity, but there are still many who have not yet fully tapped into this gold mine. 76% of companies surveyed, still do not have a clearly defined social media policy, and only 27% of them regularly review their social media content. (Research by Grant Thornton) Marketers are often faced with an abundance of live data and content, yet very little knowledge on how to use it. Data ‘marketplace’ companies such as Datashift and Gnip have evolved, solving this problem by sorting and standardising data outsourced by clients such as Facebook and Twitter, before selling it on to data analysts or brands who can use it as the basis for an idea or campaign. This negates the need for in-house experts, but creatives must still work closely with ad scientists, keeping data at the core of everything they do.

2011 saw the beginnings of a movement towards this type of marketing – Below are a few brands worth mentioning:

Nike+ City Runs

http://vimeo.com/26399542

For the launch of Nike Free Run+ 2 City Pack series, YesYesNo developed an installation for Nike’s retail stores to visualize a year’s worth of runs uploaded to the Nike+ website. Sensors placed under shoes allowed runners to bring their city (New York, London and Tokyo) to life. The visualisation not only mapped individual runs, but also the collective energy of everyone who was running in the city creating a dynamic and captivating installation.

Coca Cola

Coca Cola closed a deal with 360i to handle the social media monitoring for all its brands in North America, giving them consistent and quality data to work with across their entire product range. Calculating 146 million views of Coca Cola YouTube content, much of which had been uploaded by fans themselves, it became clear that their customers not only love to watch, but also share and create great content. More and more, consumers control brand dialogue, but companies do have the opportunity to steer this dialogue in the direction they would like, so long as they step back and take a look at what their consumers want. Coca Cola does this very well and so decided to dedicate much of 2011 to creating lots of great video content opportunities for their fans to enjoy. The Happiness Trucks in Brazil as well as flying Filipino expats home for Christmas were just a couple of the stunts Coca Cola pulled last year. Their entire marketing strategy is named ‘liquid and linked’ and focuses on the changing media environment and real-time conversation, meaning their campaigns are always targeted and up to date so as to generate a maximum ROI.

Burberry

10,366,841 Facebook page ‘likes’ and counting… a number that confirms Burberry fans, on the whole, are both keen social networkers and Internet savvy. With this in mind, Burberry decided to roll out their campaign for London Fashion Week online. ‘Tweetwalk’ was the first of its kind, allowing fans to get a preview of the SS12 collection before it had even been revealed on the runway to fashion’s most elite. Twitter was the perfect platform for the campaign, allowing Burberry to supply a real time feed of information, direct to its loyal fan base. The campaign proved to be a huge success; the ‘live’ element gave consumers a feeling of exclusivity as well as a stronger affinity with the brand, while sales soared by 34% in the first quarter of 2011 to a total revenue of £367 million.

Domino’s

Domino’s has taken a tremendous turn for the better and this is all because the brand looks at statistics, listens to customers and acts on what it finds in real time. When a damaging video found its way onto YouTube, it looked like the final straw for the already struggling pizza company. But instead of hiding away, the CEO responded immediately with another video and vowed to do better.

Turning to their customers, they encouraged criticism and guaranteed complete transparency in order to regain their trust. You may wonder how you go about convincing your customers you really mean what you say… The answer: Stream unfiltered comments about yourself on a billboard in Times Square. It was a ballsy move, but one that paid off. Last year the UK alone took $203 million and a record of $1.5 million in just one day, no bad feat for a company recently on the brink of bankruptcy.

Heinz and Qantas

Heinz and Qantas both experienced a serious technical glitch in 2011. This is where their similarities end however. One responded to the unhappy and frustrated customers whilst the other one ignored them, resulting in two very different outcomes. A quick response from Heinz meant that the marketing disaster was quickly turned into a positive branding opportunity. On the other hand, Qantas simply fuelled frustration by failing to respond to any of their customers, who then flocked to social networks to vent their anger. Particularly damaging I can imagine when 76% of the public say that they are influenced by friends recommendations when buying a product.

Brands are beginning to realize that ignoring the live data and content now available results in missed opportunities and unsatisfactory customer service. A new era of advertising is upon us with more and more brands looking for effective and interesting ways to transform these insights into compelling marketing and advertising solutions. 2012 will be an exciting year as brands experiment with new ideas, moving forward towards a new age of advertising.

The Cloud Real Time Index

We will continue to report on who’s doing what in real time marketing throughout 2012, finishing with an end of year whitepaper on all the best bits. Follow us on Twitter and like our Facebook page to receive day-to-day updates on what’s going on in the world of real time and check out our blog for longer articles.

Know of some great real time campaigns you think we should be writing about? Then let us know…

We are always on the look out, so please share anything interesting you find with us by either Tweeting @cloudandcompass, sharing it on our Facebook page or sending it to info@thecloudandcompass.com.

So what does smart TV need in order to be successful? The answer is simple…

Simplicity and user friendliness will be fundamental to the success of smart TV, this along with the quality of content they are able to provide consumers will decide their eventual fate. Apple’s entire mantra is rooted in simplicity and no doubt is something they will have thought hard about when designing their TV. Aware of this, others have also put a lot of emphasis on simplifying their own designs.

As expected, motion sensors much like Microsoft’s Kinect and voice control were both recurring features of the TVs revealed at CES. Samsung incorporated, gesture, voice and face recognition in their ES8000 model while LG’s latest TV’s will come with a dual-sided version of the Magic Motion remote control that includes gesture-based control as well as a QWERTY keyboard and a click wheel. Sony’s new Google TV remote, which doesn’t focus so heavily on voice and gesture control still looks much more sleek and less clunky than its predecessor.

While voice and gesture recognition would be fantastic if they worked efficiently, there is still much uncertainty as to how well they will be able to differentiate between commandments and conversation or general movements. As for the QWERTY keyboards, this was introduced by Sky sometime ago but never really took off. People want to enhance the ‘lean back’ experience and a keyboard does not necessarily lend itself to that. We will see TV manufacturers move further and further towards full voice and gesture control, but whether or not it will be the favourite this year depends purely on its simplicity and effectiveness.

The real fight is between Apple and Google.

Ironic really as Apple haven’t released any information about their TV yet. If their entrance to the portable music player or smartphone markets are anything to go by however, it is right for others to be afraid. CES 2012 saw most major manufacturers including Sony, LG and Vizio, hedge their bets on Google to provide their content and Internet services. Samsung is also rumoured to be releasing Google TV hardware later this year. With Apple and Google on the scene it doesn’t make much sense for manufacturers to go anywhere else, but that is not to say that Google’s content is all that good at the moment. A number of content providers have blocked access by Google TV – something they must sort out soon in order to make any impact on the market. Apple had similar problems earlier this year but we can assume that this is something they have been thinking carefully about. If rumours that they are attempting to buy the Premiership football rights were to become true, this could be a real blow to Google. Money talks and both Apple and Google have it in abundance, in the end both should be able to acquire the rights to enough content to be successful, the question is; who will get their first?

News: Microsoft gets serious about social search

Insights: Stats from IAB’s Mobile Engage 2012

Ones To Watch: Gogobot reaches 1 million subscribers

Brand Stuff: A nice app from Sweden

Cloud Loves: Pranks, come-backs and some nice uses of data visualisation.

The News:

Microsoft raises the bar for social search

Microsoft’s Bing has upped its game in the battle with dominant search engine Google. New social features now allow for smarter, interactive searching. Bing will include user comments, likes and activities from networks such as Facebook and Twitter, allowing users to get friend’s opinions on their searches. Google already does this with Google+, but Bing is integrating many different social networks, sending a strong message to Google that it is looking to compete in the area of social search.

http://pro.gigaom.com/2012/05/microsoft-raises-bar-for-social-search/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom

Twitter to roll out weekly summary email.

The summary email will feature the most relevant Tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter. On top of this it will include the most engaging tweets of the week seen by those you follow as well as who out of your friends retweeted or favourited them.

The big question: Is this a useful way of keeping with important news you would have otherwise missed, or is it just another thing clogging up your inbox? We can’t help thinking the later…

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/twitter-summary-email_b22545

Wikitude brings augmented reality to the mobile web

Wikitude brought AR to early smartphones with their AR Travel Guide back in 2008. Now, they plan to go one step further… With a patent currently pending, they are creating an ‘AR window’ which would allow any mobile webpage to implement augmented reality. The potential is huge for the millions of mobile websites who will be able to integrate AR and allow their users to interact directly with the real world while browsing the web.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhk54JBVqH0&feature=player_embedded

K-Swiss and Greenpeace tie for top honours at One Show Interactive.

This is the first time in history that they have awarded two ‘Best of Show’ winners. Here’s the K-Swiss campaign featuring Eastbound and Down’s legendary Kenny Powers. Not to be missed…

http://bit.ly/pOvHM8

Insights:

It’s all about mobile…

This Thursday, IAB hosted the annual mobile marketing event, Mobile Engage 2012. Mobile marketing is set to boom, with multi-national companies like Coca Cola announcing that they are going to put mobile at the forefront of their digital marketing strategy.

Here are some interesting stats from the event…

- We look at our phone 150 times a day. Every 6.5 minutes

- It takes 2 days for the average email to be opened. It takes 4mins for the average SMS to be opened.

- Twitter – There are 140m active users world wide. 10m active users in the UK. 80 % of active UK users use Twitter on their mobile.

- YouTube is seeing 600m views on mobile, this makes up for more than 10% of total video views. There is also 3 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube from mobile devices.

- 70% of delegates at IAB Mobile Engage agree the mobile internet UX is poor

- Investment in mobile marketing and advertising was $592m in 2011 (Source: Rutberg and Company)

http://www.nma.co.uk/news/skys-rtb-display-spend-doubles-in-a-year/4001499.article

Brand Stuff:

The Tram Sightseeing app

This is a clever app created by the transport services in Sweden. Using brand content to turn the tram into a guided city tour, this is a nice example of how brands can create content which finds new uses of products that are already available to people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUl8c2ItyPk&feature=player_embedded

Ones To Watch:

SeeSaw

A new visual content discovery and creation tool – something along the lines of what you might expect to get if you combined Pinterest and Twitter. It allows you to quickly visualize your twitter stream, with images and videos appearing already open. You can follow hashtags and conversations around particular topics and then share what you ‘saw’ on your own Twitter feed. These is a much nicer way of curating Twitter content than the newsletter rolled out by the site earlier this week. Not only is it visually attractive, but it is also is always relevant as it allows you to do your own specific searches, augmenting Twitter’s common function as a news site.

http://therealtimereport.com/2012/05/14/is-seesaw-the-new-pinterest-for-twitter/

Facebook’s social travel app reaches 1 million subscribers.

Gogobot – a travel app allowing people to share their vacation photos, give recommendations and post questions about travel destinations, reached 1 million subscribers on Wednesday after being rolled out in January this year. http://mashable.com/2012/05/16/gogobot-2/

Cloud Loves: A few things that stood out for us this week…

Nando’s Vs Santam

Nando’s and Santam have been battling it out since the chicken chain created a spoof of Santam’s ad. Instead of a costly litigation claim, the insurance company proved that a little playfulness and a good sense of humour was much more effective in getting them back and boosting their own brand awareness.

Most of you have seen the original ad and then the response by Nando’s. Here’s what happened next…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUAKjzEzeq8&feature=player_embedded

And Nando’s subsequent response…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2pkzfuyT1o&feature=player_embedded

Mint.com

A really nice use of data visualisation making it simple to track your finances.

https://www.mint.com/

Impressive use of real-time data visualisation by doctors.

This is actually from Intel’s Research & Innovation Forum 2011, but it’s worth noting again as it highlights the fantastic possibilities of using data visualisation on mobile devices.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZzGQFvVy9Q

Great use of data at point of sale by Hellman’s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFU4yEKRC0Y&feature=player_embedded

Russia names and shames bad parkers

Russia has got it right when it comes to dealing with bad parkers… Forget privacy rights, name and shame those selfish idiots! Probably wouldn’t work in London however, the car would have been towed long before anyone had time to do this. http://vimeo.com/42188610

Fiat pulls a prank on VW.

It’s always nice to see brands up for a bit of light-hearted fun. Lets hope VW take a leaf out of Santam’s book and come back with something equally entertaining…

http://vrge.co/KhACKx

The live platform allowed for real-time updates about Eurostar’s London – Amsterdam service, including a countdown to the next departure time as well as onboard updates throughout the journey. Truly interactive, the platform was also integrated with Facebook and Twitter, meaning comments from bloggers could be live on screen in minutes, allowing for numerous unique executions everyday.

The campaign, which ran until March 19th supported the strapline ‘Now from the heart of London to the soul of Amsterdam’ created by Fallon.

Eurostar Live press release

For more on Live Poster, see: http://liveposter.co.uk/

Some brands have already managed to capitalise on these changes; the words ‘Old Spice’ perhaps come to mind here. When ad campaigns are released on TV these days, brands can be in a vulnerable position as people take to the web to voice their opinions, comparing and dissecting the ads bit by bit. Instead of ignoring these comments and letting them run their course, Old Spice decided to respond with videos, posting them online in a near real-time manner. Interacting with celebrities, influencers and fans, the company produced 180 videos in just two days generating a huge amount of buzz and giving them greater control of dialogue content. Another example is BA who created a hugely successful campaign in the wake of the troubled Heathrow Terminal 5.

BA react to Terminal 5 troubles in real-time

Sadly, the number of brands taking advantage of such changes and reacting in real-time is few and far between. Many brands have insufficient knowledge of how to manipulate this changing market in a beneficial way, while large agencies that produce the majority of big campaigns are not well equipped to work in this way either. With both sides reluctant to make these changes, huge potential is being lost.

What problems do ad agencies face?

Traditional ad agencies typically have a very specific method of working, perfected to produce linear campaigns over a specified amount of time. Now things are not so simple. Campaigns are no longer a planned-out monologue from a brand, but instead consist of a complex and continuous dialogue between brands and consumers, controlled predominantly by consumers themselves. Holding constant dialogue with people allows them to get to know your brand from the inside out and builds a solid, emotional attachment. With agency dynamics as they are however, there is no one to take on this role and interact with consumers in real-time, on a personal level. If there is suddenly a large amount of hype surrounding a product or a specific campaign, brands need to be able to react instantly to reap the benefits…a response three months down the line isn’t good enough.

Whilst structural difficulties cannot be ignored, the fundamental issue is an economical one. The need for continuous dialogue and real-time responses means that whoever’s in charge needs to be creating several pieces of content a day and what’s more, this content needs to be flexible. It is not only difficult for agencies, unfamiliar to this method of working, to put a price on this work, but it is also tough to make the margins they typically make from big TV or print campaigns. Adding to the problem, brands too are unprepared to buy fluid campaign narratives. Brands need to play an active role in the dialogue, something which is often a rather alien concept to them and in a recession, when marketing budgets are already stretched, brands tend to shy away from trying anything new and untested.

It’s a matter of do or die for brands and agencies

Due to size and prestige, large agencies have not suffered too much just yet, but this will change if they do not face these issues. In a world that is ‘always-on’ new roles must be created so that there are people who can speak for the company around the clock. We may find that these roles are increasingly brought in-house, making it easier to act quickly and in synchrony with brand objectives and aspirations. Even so, creative agencies must have the ability to turn around projects in days instead of months. They will need to have people continuously monitoring and following campaigns and working with in-house teams so that together they can continue to build on them in one long brand story.

Always ahead of the game, Coca Cola’s ‘Liquid and Linked’ marketing drive focuses on how to make the most of the current media environment. ‘Liquid’ because today’s marketing landscape is forever changing and ‘linked’ because, even though campaigns must be stretched to the furthest points in media, the message must always be linked to the brand strategy. Coca Cola is well aware of the importance of its customers when it comes to producing brand content and dialogue: with over 146 million Coca Cola content views on YouTube, only 26million of these views were of content uploaded by the company itself. This leaves over 120 million views being of content uploaded by others, a figure which speaks volumes. Coca Cola’s marketing strategy focuses on 3 things: Communication – through everything from its cans to its vans, Flexibility – to respond to conversations, and Content – Coca Cola must create content that is ‘shareable’.

Like Coca Cola, brands and creative agencies must become more flexible, engaging consumers in dialogue and reacting in real-time to real world events. Failure to do so will not only leave them behind in the ever-competitive race, but it may also result in epic fails, similar to those seen at Qantas recently.

Further reading:

The future of News – How the changing media environment is effecting more than just marketing

For more news on the future of real-time marketing you should follow us on twitter here.

With thousands of YouTube videos and blog entries showing which funny questions to ask Siri next, the critic might say Siri is simply an entertainment gimmick dressed up in Apple’s sought after packaging; something of no real use we will all grow bored of in a matter of time. After all what makes it so different to Android’s Voice Actions which was available over a year ago? In many ways their abilities are quite similar; both can create text messages and e-mails, get navigation directions, call a contact, view a map of a particular area, write a note, play music and
perform a Web search. This is where their similarities end however.

What’s so special about Siri?

Unlike other voice recognition systems which often require you to memorise certain commands, Siri understands conversational language and can understand questions asked in a number of different ways. Siri is more than voice recognition technology; it is an interactive assistant with artificial intelligence. Siri will check to see if there is a clash in your calendar when you make an appointment and learn who your family members are. What’s more, because it runs on the cloud, Apple has the ability update its responses and phrases meaning Siri will continue to get better over time.

Siri Vs. Android Voice Actions

How will Siri change the way we interact with other technology in the future?

Siri is still in the early stages, but its ability to understand conversational speech has changed the way we look at this type of technology. Everyday someone else seems to buy up a voice recognition company and it is no secret that IBM and Google amongst others are working on similar technology themselves – further confirming that this is the future and not simply a passing fad.

IBM’s Watson computer plays Jeopardy!

Amazon buys Yap

Phones, which require text heavy input with a relatively minute keyboard, will be one of the first pieces of technology where voice recognition will become the predominant method of control and interaction. Similarly TV will also begin to go down these lines, with Siri TV set to be released as soon as early 2013. The technology will also be used as a standard in cars, something which can already be seen on a small scale in certain vehicles e.g. Ford’s Sync technology.

This is only the beginning however, hacks have already made Siri turn on a car engine and control a thermostat and this is all before Apple has fully opened up the technology to third-party developers. Once this finally happens, the possibilities will be endless. The Sci-Fi dream of the ‘smart’ home may not be such a far-fetched idea after all. The ‘Internet of things’, or networking of everyday objects and appliances, is already a hot topic at the moment and so it is only a matter of time before it is taken one step further and we are able to control these objects through speech alone. Family members will be differentiated by the sound of their voice meaning appliances will react differently, depending on who is talking.

Paving the way to the future…

In the distant future, everyone might even have their very own Siri robot, able to perform physical as well as online tasks, making tedious daily chores such as housework and bill paying a thing of the past. Alternatively, Siri may simply be a stepping-stone, helping us on our way to further-advanced technology – the idea of being able to control objects simply through our thoughts is no longer an eccentric fantasy of a mad man.

Real-life Jedi: pushing the limits of mind control

We are obviously many years off of anything like this, but Siri has proved that it is possible to create a voice recognition system that really works and has opened our eyes to other possibilities. All of a sudden, previously outlandish visions seem a genuine possibility.

Further reading:

The future of speech recognition

Does Siri spell the beginning of the end for Google?

Social TV is not social media combined with TV

The integration of social media and TV has been around for some time, an early example being the last presidential election where a live Facebook stream was used on screen. We also saw this year’s Super Bowl trigger over 4000 tweets per second and it is now possible to chat to the Glee characters on Twitter while the show is being aired. The use of a second screen while watching TV, known as ‘media stacking’, is commonplace; 40% of smartphone and tablet owners media stack on a daily basis, this figure going up to 76% amongst 18-24 yr olds. The success of integrating social media and TV has often led manufacturers to believe this is the way forward for the modern TV – building in social media so as to eliminate the need for a second screen.

Media stacking is not likely to stop however. When asking people what they thought about the idea of having social media platforms on their television set, almost all agreed this would be very anti-social (the very opposite of what we are trying to achieve). Updating Twitter or Facebook in front of everyone interrupts the viewing experience and excludes people rather than being a group activity. Inputting information to our social media accounts is also a surprisingly private activity. If we media stack, then everyone watching the TV can access their own social media sites at the same time, even if there are 20 people watching the same TV. On he whole we only want to access social media sites intermittently, checking emails is in fact what people are doing for 60% of the time when they media stack. Having your own screen for these types of tasks is more personal and so it is unlikely that people will switch to using their TVs for this instead, along with the fact that a remote is not the easiest tool for typing messages with.

Social TV is not connected TV

It is estimated that 41% of TVs will be connected by 2013, however it is my prediction that the majority of these TVs will not be used to their full functionality. Consumers do not want the Internet simply transferred to their television screens. This mistake has been made in the past more than once and has ended in tears as many times. One example which some of you may remember is Web TV, which believe it or not is still around in the form of MSN TV. With a set-top box and a keyboard, Web TV gave us Internet on the big screen. The idea was to use Web TV primarily for email and browsing. Unsurprisingly, Web TV failed to make a lasting impression. When everyone already owns a computer and in many cases a tablet and a smartphone from which they can browse and send emails in the comfort of their own privacy, being able to do this on your TV as well has no appeal.

Connected TV is a necessary feature of social TV, but manufacturers must focus purely on how connected TV can add to the social experience which surrounds watching television or how it can extend our viewing possibilities.

Connected TV still has work to do

So what is social TV?

Social TV is entertainment based; the relaxing TV experience but socially enhanced. Instead of trying to compete with second screens and the Internet, TVs should work in conjunction with them, making it easy to switch between different pieces of technology depending on the required function. Social TV must promote its own greatest assets, these being that it is relaxing, entertaining, a conversation starter and at least in the past, the social epicentre of the home.

They should focus on how the television can socially enrich the viewing experience for people whether in the same household as one another or miles apart. Interactive games and quizzes as well as ‘watch along with friends’ options, video messages and recommendations are all ways in which television viewing could become more social.

Simplicity is Key

It is a big mistake to try and introduce a keyboard as Sky and other companies have found out for themselves. There is already an abundance of technology with a keyboard, TV must steer clear of this and promote the ‘lean back’ experience with nothing more complicated than a remote control. Face and voice recognition may also be features we see in the future

What might we expect to see in the future?

1. Social TV as the epicentre of the ‘smart’ home.

In order to become central to the family home once more, we might find that the future TVs focus largely on utility as well as entertainment. We could imagine a time when you could control everything from this one point, the lights, the garage door, gas and electricity readings. Maybe one day it could even work in conjunction with the fridge  – placing an Ocado order when it sees you have run out of milk.

2. Customised and live Content focused

We have already begun to see much more live content on and surrounding TV. Commercials for bookies stream live odds and viewers can interact with characters while shows are being aired. Arcade Fire’s Wilderness Downtown is a fantastic example of how content can be customised for its audience. It seems only a matter of time before content will be shaped according to live data and audience assets, something which presents obvious benefits for marketers and advertisers. The future may see the audience directly involved in story creation or even being involved in the story themselves

3. Social TV as an interactive entertainment hub – a portal into other worlds

3D TV is already widespread and I don’t believe it will be so long before we see holographic images projected into our living rooms, without needing to wear glasses. Other senses such as smell and touch may also become a part of the viewing experience, fully immersing us in another world. Kinect and other technologies may mean that everything is controlled by motion and we may be able to select what advertisements we see by pointing to different objects in the programme such as clothing or a car etc.

Whatever happens, one thing is for sure… the way we interact with our TVs will never be the same again.

The future of TV – What’s next?

Going to the doctors only takes the push of a button

A media first for Channel 4, the Live Poster technology allows C4 and ITN to automatically publish dynamic copy and content throughout the day, a facility that was previously unavailable to other advertisers without significant human input.

Content related directly to that evening’s bulletin is provided by ITN from 4-7pm each day, catching commuters on their journey home. If there’s a breaking news story close to transmission, ITN will have the ability to update headlines and content, ensuring people are provided with the very latest news updates.

Channel 4 News Live Poster Press Release

This campaign has been shortlisted in the ‘Best Use of the Digital Landscape’ category at the Festival of Media Global Awards.

See all the latest on Live Poster at: http://liveposter.co.uk/