ITV

Category: Technology

  • TELiBrahma launches Brandclub

    TELiBrahma launches Brandclub

    MUMBAI: TELiBrahma, a leading mobile advertising solutions company, has launched Brandclub, a digital media closest to Point of Sale to enhance media efficiencies by targeting consumers who are within the vicinity of the retail outlets.

    Brandclub enables retailers to cross-leverage partner network to increase and engage the walk-ins. Brandclub will help consumers with relevant information about new arrivals, coupons, menus, offers and other promotional content from the store they are in, as well those nearby.

    Upon connecting to Brandclub through Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, consumers can access the above information right on their mobile phones without having to download any application.

    TELiBrahma COO and Co-Founder Ravi B R said, “Brandclub will help retailers fill a missing gap in their media plan – A highly effective hyper local media that deliver footfalls provide critical real time analytics.”

  • Google looks to better Google Map Maker through ‘Mapathon 2013’

    Google looks to better Google Map Maker through ‘Mapathon 2013’

    MUMBAI: Google India will be conducting its first ever mapping competition in India with Mapathon 2013 with the aim of providing people with the most comprehensive, accurate and easy-to-use maps of the country.

    Mapathon 2013, which starts on 12 February and culminates on 25 March, is an India-wide mapping contest open to just about anybody who lives in India.

    Google is inviting amateur mappers and mapping enthusiasts from all over the country to help create better maps for India by adding their knowledge of local places through Google Map Maker.

    The top 1000 mappers participating in Mapathon stand a chance to win Android tablets, smartphones, gift vouchers and Google merchandise.

    So how does it all work? Google Map Maker is an easy-to-use tool that allows users to add more detail to Google Maps through a few simple clicks. Using Google Map Maker, users can select a specific area on Google Maps and add new information based on the local knowledge or by referencing Google Maps satellite imagery.

    With just another click, you can save and submit your input and once the submitted edit has been verified, the new information will be added to Google Maps.

    Highlighting the USP of Google Map Maker, Google India Product Manager Jayanth Mysore says, “It has always been our endeavour at Google to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. One way we hope to achieve this is by mapping the world and what better way to do this than by asking users to map their neighbourhood.

    “Google aims to provide better maps for India by building better maps for the users, by the users. What started off as an initiative by a few Google engineers is now used across the world and today, citizens across India can participate in this great project through Mapathon 2013.”

    Google Map Maker was conceptualised in India more than four years ago, and ever since, it has provided a rich set of features for users to map with.

  • IPTV’s share in pay TV to rise to 18% by 2018 from 11.5% in 2012

    IPTV’s share in pay TV to rise to 18% by 2018 from 11.5% in 2012

    MUMBAI: The worldwide pay-TV market grew at a steady pace in 2012 generating $238 billion by end-of-year, up from $223 billion in 2011, according to ABI Research‘s ‘Pay-TV ARPU and Revenues‘ Market Data.

    The global pay-TV market is expected to generate $304 billion in 2018 with a CAGR of four per cent.

    Service revenue contributions from cable TV are proving mixed. The Asia-Pacific region saw service revenue growth due to underlying increase in subscriptions. However, cable TV operators in North America are experiencing a decline in service revenue as result of a contracting subscriber base, despite cable TV innovations such as DVR and HDTV.

    Globally, IPTV is gaining market share year-over-year while the rest of the pay-TV platforms are slowly contracting. IPTV service revenue market share increased from 10 per cent in 2011 to 11.5 per cent in 2012. Cable TV market share dropped to 47 per cent in 2012 from 48.5 per cent in 2011 while satellite TV market share dropped around one per cent.

    ABI Research VP, practice director of core forecasting Jake Saunders said, “Availability of super-fast broadband networks and bundle offers from telcos over high-speed networks are driving the growth of IPTV adoption. IPTV market share is expected to increase to 18 per cent in 2018, to generate $53 billion in revenue”.

    ABI Research analyst Khin Sandi Lynn said, “Based on ABI Research‘s global Pay-TV market share analysis, satellite giant DirecTV ranks top in terms of Pay-TV service revenue across all platforms. In the global IPTV sector, Verizon is the top ranked IPTV operator with the highest service revenue”.

  • 3net reaches 40 mn households in two years

    3net reaches 40 mn households in two years

    MUMBAI: 3net, the joint venture 3D network from Discovery, Sony and Imax, has reached 40 million US households even as it approaches its second anniversary on 13 February

    3net is available across five programme distribution affiliates, including DirecTV, Comcast, Service Electric Cablevision and Netflix.

    In addition to the network‘s specials, concerts and one-off documentaries debuted over the past two years, February also marks a programming milestone for 3net, as the network premieres its 13th 3D series.

    3net said it has benefited significantly from the rise of 3D TV adoption, with 3D televisions currently in almost one quarter of all homes in the U.S. and industry forecasts for significant further growth in 2013. By contrast, HD television had achieved low single digit household penetration at the same point in its evolutionary cycle more than a decade ago.

    3net president, CEO Tom Cosgrove said, “With 3D televisions already in nearly 25 million US households – and industry predictions of dramatic in-home 3D growth this year – we celebrate our second anniversary with a continued commitment to meeting the ever-growing consumer appetite for high-quality, original 3D television content.

    “We‘re proud to make our unique brand of immersive, original 3D programming available to more than 40 million US homes, and we look forward to further growth in the in-home 3D market as more consumers embrace the format – particularly as the electronics industry continues to include 3D as a feature available in nearly all of the new television models available to consumers this year, including every UHD/4K set coming to market.”

    3net also recently launched 3net Studios, with an overarching mission to fuel not only the flagship US channel service, but also to make the highest quality native 3D and 4K content available to consumers around the globe through a broad array of international distribution partners.

    ‘Crazy Land‘ is a new original series which explores the great American subcultures and the unusual people who inhabit them. In the first episode, ‘Real Life Super Heroes‘, young people are donning masks and capes to create a new breed of true-life super heroes. These costumed crusaders are putting themselves on the front line, whether by confronting muggers, drug dealers or feeding the homeless.

  • Liberty Global acquires Virgin Media for $23.3 billion

    Liberty Global acquires Virgin Media for $23.3 billion

    MUMBAI: American billionaire John C Malone‘s Liberty Global has agreed to acquire Virgin Media in a stock and cash deal valued at approximately $23.3 billion.

    The implied purchase price, before taking into account transaction costs and other expenses, represents an equity value of approximately $16 billion and an enterprise value of approximately $23.3 billion.

    The acquisition will lead to the creation of world’s leading broadband communications company, covering 47 million homes and serving 25 million customers across 14 countries, Liberty Global said in a statement.

    Complementary strengths across product suite, with aligned triple-play products, road-map and expertise across digital TV, broadband and telephony services. Mobility and B2B expertise offer significant additional growth potential in key markets, it added.

    Liberty Global President and CEO Mike Fries said, “Adding Virgin Media to our large and growing European operations is a natural extension of the value creation strategy we‘ve been successfully using for over seven years. Virgin Media will add significant scale and a first-class management team in Europe‘s largest and most dynamic media and communications market. After the deal, roughly 80% of Liberty Global‘s revenue will come from just five attractive and strong countries – the UK, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands.”

    “Like all of our strategic acquisitions we expect this combination to yield meaningful operating and capex synergies of approximately $180 million per year upon full integration. But just as importantly, Virgin Media‘s market leading innovation and product expertise, particularly in mobile and B2B, will accelerate our own development of these business segments.”

    “For these and other reasons, Virgin Media will be complementary to our own organic revenue and OCF growth profile, while providing attractive free cash flow enhancement to our shareholders. As a result, we intend to increase our commitment to share buybacks going forward with an initial target of approximately $3.5 billion over a two-year period upon closing.”

    Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett said: “Over the past six years, Virgin Media has transformed the digital experience of millions of customers, catalyzed a deep-rooted change in the UK’s digital landscape and delivered impressive growth and returns for our shareholders. I’m confident that this deal will help us to build on this legacy. Virgin Media and Liberty Global have a shared ambition, focus on operational excellence and commitment to driving shareholder value. The combined company will be able to grow faster and deliver enhanced returns by capitalizing on the exciting opportunities that the digital revolution presents, both in the UK and across Europe.”

    As part of its acquisition of Virgin Media, Liberty Global will redomicile from Delaware to the United Kingdom by becoming a subsidiary of a new holding company, a UK plc. Liberty Global’s current headquarters and other principal offices will remain in place. Liberty Global will be listed on NASDAQ and will continue to report earnings and other financial statements in accordance with Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, including dollar denominated financial statements.

    Liberty Global’s Board of Directors will continue to form the board of Liberty Global, with the addition of one Virgin Media director to be named prior to the closing.

  • BBC launches sports mobile app for international audiences

    BBC launches sports mobile app for international audiences

    MUMBAI: BBC‘s international website BBC.com has launched a sports mobile application for iPhone and iPod touch devices across the globe.

    The free app will deliver news, live scores, stats, commentary and analysis on-the-go. An application for Android devices will be introduced soon.

    The application has a customisable menu that allows audiences to keep up with their choice of sports providing breaking football news and gossip, live text coverage of the UK Premier League, Rugby Union Six Nations championship and the upcoming F1 season.

    The application has new features like a mobile football live scores section that allows users to follow the action even though they may not actually be at the stadium. It provides a league-by-league overview of the latest scores and goal scorers at a glance, with dedicated match pages for more in-depth information, bringing together starting line-ups, match stats, live text commentary and the post-game report.

    In addition, a fixtures and results section has been developed to help users keep on top of all the major UK and international football competitions, by simply selecting any day in the season from the app‘s calendar.

    BBC Global News controller of digital and technology James Montgomery said, “Thanks to our responsive mobile site, the sports content we provide on mobile devices is already a large traffic driver for the BBC, which gives us a competitive edge in international markets. Now with the launch of our international sports app for iOS devices, we are giving users another simple way to get the content they love, whether it‘s checking out how their team have got on, following live text updates on the day‘s sporting action or catching up with the latest news.”

    Recently, BBC.com introduced a new design so that the site will now automatically scale to fit different sized screens from feature phones, smartphones to any mobile/ tablet device up to 7″ in size.

  • Twitter acquires social TV analytics co Bluefin

    Twitter acquires social TV analytics co Bluefin

    MUMBAI: Micro-blogging platform Twitter has acquired leading social TV analytics company Bluefin Labs that provides data products to brand advertisers, agencies, and TV networks.

    Bluefin Labs started out as an academic pursuit in cross-modal machine learning that Mike and Deb brought out of the MIT Media Lab. It has worked with companies like P&G and PepsiCo, and TV networks such as CBS, Turner Broadcasting, Fox Broadcasting, and Discovery Communications.

    “We believe that Bluefin‘s data science capabilities and social TV expertise will help us create innovative new ad products and consumer experiences in the exciting intersection of Twitter and TV,” Twitter COO Ali Rowghani.

    Rowghani said the acquisition reflects Twitter‘s commitment to the social TV market, and builds on the exclusive partnership with Nielsen to create Nielsen Twitter TV Rating.

    “We intend to honor existing Bluefin customer contracts, but we will not continue to sell Bluefin‘s product suite beyond the existing contracts. We plan to collaborate closely with Nielsen and SocialGuide on product development and research to help brands, agencies, and networks fully understand the combined value of Twitter and TV,” Rowghani assured.

    Founded in 2008, Bluefin also measures whether people online are making favorable or unfavorable comments.

  • Star India claims solid engagement levels on its cricket portal

    Star India claims solid engagement levels on its cricket portal

    MUMBAI: Star India, which recently launched Starsports.com, says that the site has recorded the highest time spent by users on any sports website per visit.

    Cricket fans, the broadcaster says, spent as much as 19 minutes per visit and viewed 342 years-equivalent of video in the first month of launch.

    The average time spent per visit in December, as per Comscore, despite the site being active for only five days that month, was 17.8 minutes and increased to 19 minutes in the first month.

    The 5.5 million unique viewers to the site across devices are enough to fill 83 `Eden Gardens‘ that, according to BCCI, has a capacity of 66,349. Starsports.com crossed 100,000 concurrent users consuming video during the third one-day international between India and England.

    The cricket timeline allows users to pull out past matches, view top moments, play around with the scorecard, while all the while enjoying unmatched video streaming.

    Star India COO Sanjay Gupta said, “Sports content in India has not seen much innovation across mediums. We want to change that and give fans the control to engage even more deeply with their favourite content. Through the world‘s first cricket timeline, viewers can pick the exact moments they want to see, during or after the live match.”

    “In fact we want to seamlessly integrate data and video throughout the site so that it‘s an unmatched viewing experience. We are excited about this leap and the response so far, and look forward to scaling it up further,” Gupta said.

    The broadcaster said every feature of the site aims to engage the consumer – from the video timeline to the reinvented commentary section that focusses on the action ball-by-ball, while pulling in real-time conversations on social media. The site boasts of a video scorecard bringing alive the statistics with video clips, analytics and graphics.

  • Free streaming gaining ground in the US

    Free streaming gaining ground in the US

    MUMBAI: New options are emerging in the consumer television landscape in the US though traditional pay TV operators and broadcaster networks still dominate, according to The NPD Group, a global information company.

    The new options include subscription video on demand (SVOD), electronic sell-through (EST) and free TV streaming.

    While SVOD drives the most online TV streams by far, the incidence of consumers who used SVOD and free streaming in 2012 was relatively equal.

    According to NPD‘s “Free Streaming TV” report, 12 per cent of US TV watchers reported streaming TV shows for free during the prior three months, compared to 14 per cent who watched a TV show via SVOD.

    NPD senior VP of industry analysis Russ Crupnick said, “Over half of the viewers for streaming TV are between the ages of 18 and 34, so the YouTube generation is evolving from short-form and user-generated content to TV shows and, like YouTube, they can watch where and when they want. Despite the attention lavished on tablets and phones, an astonishing 83 percent of free TV streaming programs are viewed on a computer.”

    Nearly all broadcast and cable TV networks offer free streaming of their programming via the Internet; however, based on NPD‘s latest information, consumer usage of free-streaming TV sites varies. Hulu.com dominated free streaming TV, accounting for 43 per cent of total streams during 2012.

    After Hulu, the five broadcast network sites (CBS.com, ABC.com, FOX.com, NBC.com, and CWTV.com) accounted for another 30 per cent of total streams. Four cable TV sites — abcfamily.com, comedycentral.com, MTV.com, and A&ETV.com — round out the top-ten free streaming TV sites. NPD‘s research shows that streaming consumers are very satisfied overall with the experience.

    All of the top 10 free streaming sites have strong consumer feedback with 75 per cent or more of each of these site‘s users reporting that they intend to return to the site in the future.

    Hulu.com, in particular, has very committed users, given that two-thirds say they “definitely” will return to the site.

    These free sites generally perform well on convenience and site organisation. Most of them also perform well on current release availability; however, Fox.com streamers rate the site much lower on this measure, due to the fact that Fox generally delays availability of its programming. “The consumer response to program availability on Fox, speaks to the often-controversial question of whether the audience detects shows that are windowed,” Crupnick added.

    Based on NPD‘s findings, the shift toward internet video distribution drives a more complex and diverse set of content and purchase and rental options to consumers. With it comes a more diverse set of direct and indirect competitors among movie studios and TV networks, as well as their TV and digital distribution partners.

    According to Crupnick, “from the consumer perspective, it is important to monitor the habits and perceptions of the audience as all of these distribution models evolve, which will help align programming to the target audience and inform whether consumers are responding positively to the experience these options provide.”

  • Netflix, Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit Entertainment in multi-year agreement

    Netflix, Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit Entertainment in multi-year agreement

    MUMBAI: OTT service provider Netflix and Flavor Unit Entertainment, the production company owned by actress Queen Latifah and Shakim Compere, have announced an exclusive licensing agreement for movies in the US.

    In the first-look deal, Netflix will have its pick of movies that will debut on its internet television subscription service shortly after their theatrical release from the company that made films like ‘Bringing Down the House‘ and ‘Beauty Shop‘.

    Beginning later this year Netflix members can exclusively enjoy Flavor Unit titles including the thriller, ‘House of Bodies‘, starring Terrence Howard and Peter Fonda and ‘Percentage‘ starring Ving Rhames, Cam‘ron and Macy Gray.

    Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said, “We are delighted to work with Queen Latifah to be the exclusive destination for what are sure to be relevant, entertaining movies. Queen Latifah has a long track record of creating hits and Flavor Unit Entertainment is a fresh and exciting voice in the industry.”

    Queen Latifah said, “Netflix is such a strong brand and the perfect place to showcase our projects”.