With the increasing popularity of connected TVs, broadcasters need to evolve and adapt to thrive in a more competitive scenario.

Connectivity patterns

When it comes to connectivity, typically one approach establishes itself as an industry standard based on functionalities and success. When it comes to personal computers, a blatant example of this are search engines and chromium, Google Chrome’s own open-source search engine that has taken the world wide web by storm. Similarly, with mobile phones the success of the app store concept has been so great that is now being implemented on every mobile device to unify user experience. Also TV sets are not immune, in fact we’re now seeing a rise in app stores, content carousels or search engines designed specifically for smart TVs, being released by OTT operators or TV manufacturers. 

This is why, now more than ever, broadcasters need to come together to empower viewer experience of broadcast content and maintain a key role for the future of TV. 

Industry standards: HbbTV and TVium

The creation and adoption of HbbTV, the only European industry standard for NextGenTV combining broadcast and broadband content, represented the first important step for broadcasters to begin to navigate this new media landscape. In fact, HbbTV provides TV manufacturers with specs, decided by a committee and updated every three years, to allow the delivery of NextGenTV. This approach might however not be effective enough to boost the implementation of HbbTV at the high speed required by broadcasters to compete in a crowded market.

To help bridge this gap and make adoption of standards faster and more effective, Fincons Group has joined forces with TVium to develop and distribute a state-of-the-art, open-source HbbTV-based framework that enables collaboration and integration between broadcasters that can leverage this framework to grasp every opportunity coming from HbbTV.

Why TVium

Up to now, broadcasters have worked separately towards the same goal: a solution to innovate traditional content. TVium does exactly that, also allowing broadcasters to collaborate to accelerate the development of HbbTV broadcast apps to stay relevant in an evolving landscape.
This is a strategic and distinctive proposition that was recognised also in the latest HbbTV Symposium where TVium won the HbbTV Award within the “Best Tool or Product for HbbTV development or delivery” category.

Implementing TVium means also enabling a better UX to discover and recommend content provided by broadcasters’ content recommendation systems, offering an evolution from traditional zapping! This way, content providers are given the chance to promote more of their own material or to sell their recommendation to other providers, increasing monetisation opportunities and creating fruitful collaborations. 

Performance video to disrupt the TV market

The concept of performance video that is made available by auction ensures that viewers are offered the most interesting content for their preferences and that broadcasters are rewarded appropriately on this basis. This frees viewers from model where players try to lock them in within an ecosystem of limited titles and options. 

Through Open APIs (DASH for Videos, VMAP for Ads and JSONs for Interactivity), the TVium open-source approach aggregates an open ecosystem of SaaS providers and integrators allowing any broadcaster or new video OTT publisher to edit their open Connected TV Channel, especially with useful features that allow:

• TV publishers to earn money from people zapping out by selling traffic to affiliated OTT publishers on Pay Per Zap basis;
• users to get a viewable product in a wish list just by pressing OK on their remote control;
• DTT or OTT publishers to track to cross sell Linear Exposure Segments and to substitute Linear Ads with Digital ones.

Benefits of TVium’s open-source approach

By offering content that is better adjusted to the video format, services can be re-linearized whether they are live or on-demand. For advertisers, TVium opens up new opportunities for more useful, diverse and actionable advertising through improved discovery of content from broadcast partners. At the same time TV manufacturers can reduce advertising spend and rely on incremental revenue from direct and indirect commercial agreements with broadcasters through an ecosystem of SaaS providers via Open APIs.