WORD OF MOUTH is one of the most reliable avenues to success for any product.
Television is no different. Hit shows have been hit shows because they strike a chord and people talk about them together over the proverbial water cooler at work the next day or among friends at the rink, for example.
With the mass market adoption of cell phones and their texting capabilities, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other messaging or multimedia platforms, it’s been years since any of us had to wait until the next day to figure out if people are digging what they see from their favourite TV show.
Word of mouth – on anything – can be instant. Its potential proliferation? Exponential.
But even with all of that – and with so much of the prime-time lineups available online – it’s still difficult for viewers to point EXACTLY to when the funniest part of the show was, or the surprise plot twist, or cameo of their favourite actor (especially when the broadcasters so often have the clips taken off of YouTube, too).
Best we can do is tell our Facebook friends or Twitter followers to go online (ctv.ca or globaltv.com or cbc.ca or citytv.com, etc) to about half-way through the show, for example, or watch just after when she does this or that, or something along those lines.
For the broadcaster these conversations, while capturable and helpful, are taking place beyond them, outside of their broadband player, even as people watch the show on their computer screen (or internet-connected TV, as those will grow in popularity).
As part of the Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone, new startup Lean-In aims to make those conversations part of the broadcasters’ broadband players, using comments, for example, to link exactly to the best parts of the video – which then allows the broadcaster to sell around those flagged high points.
“TV online in its current form is really broken,” says Luke Davies (left), president of Lean-In. “There are three major parties involved: viewers, advertisers and broadcasters – and broadcasters tend to take their experience, repeat it online and think that it’s going to work on the internet. But they’re challenged because they have way less advertising time they can sell and internet viewers have higher expectations.
“So viewers are kind of unsatisfied with the current experiences because they’re used to an experience where you can search and you can plan and you can share and you can have social conversations,” he continued. “And the advertisers are disadvantaged as well because their actual demand isn’t being met by the broadcasters (who are mostly sold out of their pre-roll ad time)”
“So our value proposition is to solve all of those problems for all three parties. We’re an overlay software company that has an interaction layer to TV, which enables viewers to make comments and to share some of the video stream.”
For example, while watching a broadcasters’ broadband player with the Lean-In overlay (Lean-In works with online video), viewers – who are linked through Lean-In, authenticated through their Facebook accounts – can leave a comment at any time while the video plays. This will alert their FB friends who can click and be directed right to the portion of the video the original viewer found worthy of comment.
When the link is clicked, another ad can roll – and viewed by a very engaged fan looking to watch what their friend found so funny. Lean-In describes itself as “a stealthy toolbar that opens up a whole new dimension of video. It empowers audiences to share, comment, bookmark, and discover.” Other features include a patent pending video map, a video heat map and a loyalty program with audience competition at its core.
Plus, with so much content available online its becoming near impossible to edit, program or create your own content lineup. Lean-In provides users with the ability to explore what other videos their friends watched or found interesting or commented on, making it a potential curation solution where popular content is edited and promoted.
“So you see a comment that you like, you can click on that person’s comment, and you can see all the places in the video that they interacted and all the parts of the video that were interesting to them. But you can also go one level higher and see all what altogether they’ve watched,” explained Davies.
“This solves a major problem for TV viewers because there’s too much content available online. Figuring out what to watch used to be an easy decision. You looked at the TV guide it’s 7:00, I’m watching Seinfeld, for example. Now, everything’s available on demand and there’s too much stuff, so how do you pick? Our theory is that you pick based on your relationships.”
So if you value your friends’ TV tastes, with Lean-In, you can literally lean in over their shoulder, virtually, read their comments, “find out what they liked about it and then just click to it and start watching it,” explains Davies. “I make content choices based on my friends and based on people’s profiles.”
And if all that is visible to the broadcaster and advertiser who are also leaning in, the broadcaster can know instantly what’s popular and sell around it, satisfying their clients and boosting revenue
For more on Lean-In’s promising technology and both Davies and CEO Hecham Ghazal (right), click here.
