Monterosa (www.monterosa.co.uk) have confirmed their attendance at the Social TV Forum Europe, (www.social-tv.net) taking place on the 15/16th March 2010 at Olympia, London.

Monterosa are a creative and technology company based in central London. We’re a team of experienced producers, project managers, software engineers and designers with range of backgrounds backgrounds in broadcast, advertising, games and software development.

Social TV is buzzing in the US, but what is it and what does it mean for the UK?   One of the more social uses of TV in the UK many years ago were basic multiplayer interactive TV games like those offered by PlayJam that allowed a few people to participate at the same time or on different devices like those offered by gameplay.  Sms to the TV screen and formats like Idol which have increased the level of audience participation and influence over the years continues to gain momentum.  News programmes using video captured on mobile phones enabled citizens to participate in journalism and has become an accepted practice.  Overlays of sms interaction like AQA’s Mr. Know it All on MTV became common amongst channels targeting younger audiences.

Current TV and other mainstream channels started to use more semi-professional content within or alongside professionally produced programming.  Social networks like bebo and MySpace began “broadcasting” original online TV formats produced by Indies like Endemol.  Then during the the American election night, twitter got into the TV game.  For the first time, the Twitter stream of public conversations about the election, mostly vocal pro-Obama supporters, were broadcast on TV.  Although there wasn’t anything too new about the format since the UK has been doing it for years – it was momentous in that it was Twitter joining the conversation on TV.  Any of these activities as well as many others could be construed as social TV since they are inherently more social than the previous decades of passive viewing where the only social aspect was discussion at the water cooler the next day at work.  Many of the talented executives we’ve gathered here today are responsible for designing and delivering future TV experiences now.  With them, we will explore how we can offer more ways to communication, share and create more value from TV whichever screen your audience chooses and through inter-device interaction.

Those “water cooler” conversations were a crucial form of viral marketing – word of mouth recommendations from people you know and trust.  The US buzz about social TV largely has to do with the creation of recommendations engines that display suggestions from others based on your viewing habits.  Amazon’s “If you like this you may also like this” or “Others who bought this also bought this” approach to programme discovery is  taking “social media TV” to another stage in it’s evolution.  Sky and Virgin are looking at these applications now.  Is this is the best we can do to catapult TV into a new immersive conversation?  Our panellists are here to share their views and inspire your creative imagination.

The most social activities that occur while people are watching TV are the millions of people texting, instant messaging and interacting on social networks while they watch TV.  TV viewing may be passive, but the viewers are actively socializing on other media.  There are some companies that are looking to tap into this social behaviour by enabling device to device peer to peer communications displayed on the TV screen.  What does this mean?  While most 16-24 year olds spend their TV time texting friends or following friends on facebook they can opt in to display their messages on the TV screen.  One person can text another friend on their mobile phone and both friends can choose to see the message on their mobile and the TV screen.  They can also participate in group chat amongst friends on TV with some people communicating from a PC and some on their mobile with the entire chat displayed on TV.  This private chat replaces public chat with people you don’t know and connects you via your preferred communications device.  You can imagine the banter about the ManU Chelsea match.  You can experience the pub with your mates without having to leave your home.  For younger audiences, conversations are about their lives – the stuff they’re already talking about while the telly is on, but now it’s displayed on TV too.  The power of recommendation in this environment is even more powerful since it adds the key time based element causing a real time recommendation with immediate effect.  Seeing a facebook status update from one of your real friends while watching TV means you can stay connected and socialize with friends who may or may not be watching TV and without having to use a keyboard (which never took off).  This, combined with recommendation applications, could create a more social TV experience at least until the development of screens creates immersive in-home environments that teleport you into the location you’re viewing for a true virtual reality entertainment experience.

Today we will explore these themes in depth, providing you with insights and case studies that you can apply to your businesses now and a view into the the not so distant IP enabled future of TV where engagement takes centre stage.

Angel Gambino, Vice President, Business Development, Sonico

Since the launch of BBC iPlayer in 2007 online catch-up services from UK broadcasters have attracted much attention. This segment is growing rapidly – in the UK online TV (including TV shows, sport, news and niche) generated £48.2m in 2008 according to Screen Digest, projected to grow to £92.4m in 2009. The broadcasters’ own websites accounted for 53% of UK free-to-view online TV consumption in 2008.

But how can broadcasters increase their share of online eyeballs and, by extension, revenues? Online, TV is not the only source of entertainment for web users and it must compete with a host of sites demanding users’ time – from passive consumption of music to active participation in social networks and user-generated video sites.

Broadcasters cannot ignore the fragmentation of the traditional TV audience or the swell of traffic which has grown up online. In order to tap into it there are two obvious strategies which can be adopted. One option is to license shows to other online video sites, taking a cut of the ad-revenue (usually around 70%). But third party providers often cannot sustain CPM rates equivalent to those for a broadcaster’s own site. The process of reselling shows to an affiliate may also be complicated by rights issues – for example, many premium shows are from the US, making UK broadcasters’ ability to resell content more complex than if its catalogue was purely locally-produced.

The alternatives are syndication and viral distribution which are likely to be more lucrative for broadcasters on a per-view basis. This involves embedding the broadcaster’s own video player into third party sites leveraging popular destinations and allowing shows to be embedded in blogs directly into the conversation. Although the broadcaster carries the cost of ad sales and video delivery, the benefits of this system are two-fold. Firstly, by centralizing ad sales the broadcaster can maintain the typically higher CPM rates associated with their own catch-up services. With no third party sites competing to sell ads against the same content the downward pressure on these ad rates will be minimized. Secondly, the broadcaster will be able to retain a greater percentage of ad revenues compared to a straight licensing deal.

In the US Hulu, ABC and CBS all syndicate their video players. According to web metrics firm comScore CBS recorded nearly three times as many viewers for its videos across the 300 partner sites which make up the CBS Audience Network as it did visitors to cbs.com in July 2009 thanks to this strategy. In the UK Five is emerging as the most forward-thinking when it comes to tapping into the disaggregated audience. The broadcaster announced in June 2009 that it would begin syndicating its video player to a number of websites, extending its reach beyond five.tv.

Dan Cryan, Editor, Screen Digest

Social TV Forum will explore these topics in conference format – visit www.social-tv.net for more details.

The topic of Social TV has recently hit the headlines in an article published in the Guardian on the 15th December.

With the latest X Factor Craze taking over our TV screens, Gary Hayes looks at the buzz created on Social Media tools such as Twitter and the effect they have on the hype generated around the top shows on our box.

Gary Hayes, formerly a senior development producer for the BBC talks about the future of our TV..

For full article click here

To discover more about the future of Social TV, visit our event taking place on the 16th March 2010.

Early Bird – save 25% discount on bookings made before the 22nd December!