ActiveVideo is bringing Web-style simplicity and scale to interactive ads for television and connected devices using its Cloud UI.
ActiveVideo will be offering its Cloud UIs to pay-TV providers, online video providers and the CE industry, unveiling new functionality that enables its CloudTV software platform to deliver web-style interactive TV advertising at scale.
In order to accelerate deployment, ActiveVideo has signed a partnership with BrightLine, a provider of rich media solutions on TV, for the entertainment and advertising industries. The first AdCast deployments are with American Express and L’Oreal cosmetics.
AdCast enables ads written once in HTML5, including existing Web ads, to ubiquitously provide advertisers with a consistency of experience on set-top boxes (STBs) and connected devices.
Active Video believes that with AdCast it can overcome the hurdles which so far prevented interactive TV ads to become common place. “There are 300 million set-tops and connected devices out there, so there is a mass market,” said Anoop Mohan, senior director, product management at ActiveVideo, speaking to Broadband TV News.
“For advertisers, scale and time to market are crucial and you can’t tell them to wait until there is a dedicated application is developed for every type of connected device out there.
“Scale is also very important, a couple of million is simply not enough. Advertisers need very big volumes.”
Could-based AdCast should solve the problem of developping an app for each device out there and by using the Cloud TV technology to reach the entire universe. This would also be a change for the TV inudstry to tap into the lucrative market of interactive olibe advertising. “This is an opportunity for the TV industry yo shift these adddollars back to television.”
Initial pilots with the service show great promise and increased effectiveness. “We achieved a 2% response with interactive TV, compared with 0.1% with online. Engagemetn is also important and we saw a massive increase, from 12 seconds with online to 3.5 minutes with ITV.”
BrightLine and ActiveVideo are already working collaboratively, bringing targeted, measurable and interactive HTML5-based experiences for BrightLine clients to an expanding array of connected devices.
At CES, ActiveVideo is demonstrating how the partnership is already delivering the same HTML5-based experiences created once to a diversity of viewing platforms without native HTML5 support, including pay-TV set-top boxes and other connected CE devices.