The Evolution of the Living Room: Connected TV #4

From one way channels, to second screening.

When internet came along the TV was no longer just for watching. Now, you can read the news, listen to music, watch your favourite programs and buy your weekly shopping within the comfort of your own living room. At the click of a remote, interacting with consumers from around the world is easy even through gaming consoles like Xbox Live. The living room isn’t even a room any more – it’s a hub for streams of information and entertainment that connect you to the outside world. TV has become a multimedia platform.

This variety of content makes the user a savvy individual. A lot of choice allows consumers to make their own opinions whilst online connectivity makes their opinion relevant. Before, if you had a problem with a product, no one would really get to hear about it apart from neighbours over the garden fence. Nowadays consumers are empowered to express their dissatisfaction through social media. This has affected the way a product is marketed and even its lifecycle.

The power of choice has resulted in consumers being less vulnerable and more sceptical to blind promotions. Therefore advertisers have to work harder to attract consumers’ attention. Campaigns prioritise consumer entertainment over a ‘buy me, buy me’ attitude because it is the product’s image which persuades sales one way or another. Gorillas play the drums for Dairy Milk and flash mobs are unleashed on behalf of T-Mobile to inspire people. The user-experience is equally varied because each brand will market their product in a different way. Therefore, marketers need to find their niche and appeal to specific groups of people. Otherwise, their product is at risk of washing over the masses without a unique message to maintain loyalty.

Integration of the internet within your living room makes the user-experience highly selective. Where we used to have ample opportunity to influence a consumer purchase decision, this luxury is now over. Not only can you select what to experience, but the power of when and through what device, is within your grasp too. On Demand and +1 channels were made possible through satellite TV but are popular through internet connectivity on smart phones and tablets. Optimised gaming consoles like Xbox Live let you watch TV and surf the internet and play games. With so many choices on what to do in the living room, and how to do it, brand competition is massive. Especially when consumers can do multiple things at once; watch X Factor and simultaneously tweet about it on their iPhones, for example (my family do this all the time!). Corporations are fighting it out for a space in your living room with strategies that blog post #5 will be focusing on.

 

 

 

 

The Evolution of The Living Room: Connected TV #3

The Birth of the Demographic: An Advertising Revolution

“So you have the birth of demographic. The market is no longer segmented like ‘TV watchers vs. non-TV watchers’ but rather ‘news watchers, comedy watchers and film watchers’ who aren’t directly opposed to one another.” – Blog post #2

This market dissection had a profound influence on the world of advertising as we know it today. All of a sudden, brands felt the pressure to target their audiences not just through content, but selective viewership too. There would be little increase in sales if a company advertised their insurance during kids’ story time.

Consider this shift from a living room perspective. You’re an enthusiastic home chef. Watching cookery shows on Sky Living is an evening habit of yours. Product-based advertising alone would have seen you watch a bombardment of flowery aprons. But then, selective viewer-oriented advertising broke down the information of you as a ‘cooking enthusiast’ and made assumptions about your age group, gender and a lot more. Aprons would be advertised during Nigella because it was more likely those watching were 40 to 55 year old females. By contrast, professional cooking equipment might be advertised during Jamie Oliver, where both genders are likely to watch. You have perceptive media.

And so the user-experience is no longer a one way flow of information. Advertisers take demographical information about you, feed this through their products and project information back at you through the TV screen. This enables companies to identify market gaps and develop tactical strategies of either filling them, or directing their promotion elsewhere. Either way, the goal is to generate maximum profit through targeted and researched output.

This is old news and we’re moving towards a more technologically advanced audience…Blog post #4 deals with the effect of integration: the TV and the internet. How does this change user experience? How does this effect advertising? And what impact does satellite TV have specifically?