Mumbai: Consider this: a 42-inch 4K ultra HD smart LED TV controlled by a dedicated app on a smart phone. The app facilitates and enhances viewers’ experiences while watching TV: finding a particular TV series, a news bulletin, or a movie to watch; seeing what his or her friends are watching; or browsing through his list of favourite channels’ EPG. It also offers the option of ‘content throwing’ allowing shows and programmes to be transferred from a smart phone or tablet to the big TV screen. Apps are customised for each of us based on our content consumption behaviour. Such apps with the additional ability to support voice commands and hand gestures will make us wonder how we ever lived without them. This is the future now!
Just for clarity, a CTV is a television set that gets its content from the internet as compared to the traditional route of either through cable or DTH operators. This content is usually consumed through apps embedded on smart TV sets or through dongles like the Amazon Fire TV Stick, Roku Streaming Stick, and gaming consoles (xbox, playStation, etc.) connected to regular TV sets, thus enabling them to access internet content. Over-the-top (OTT) video streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sony LIV, ZEE5, Disney Hotstar, the omnipresent YouTube, and multiple apps that are compatible with CTVs are providing content to viewers on such TV screens. For the record, even news channels watched through the YouTube app installed on a smart TV set are within the purview of CTV.
Consuming OTT content on larger, connected screens is a trend that will only continue to grow across the country. As per an EY study, the number of connected television sets is expected to grow to 40 million by 2024, led by the increase in wireless and wired broadband connections alongside the proliferation of low-cost smart television sets.
Once again, for clarity, we need to be clear that OTT and CTV advertising are different; CTV advertising goes beyond OTTs and explores genres of news and music as well. The CTV audience is affluent, discerning, and HNI. They can be reached through platforms such as YouTube and other ad-supported OTT platforms.
CTV combines the power of TV’s format with the addressability and attribution capabilities of digital. The discerning English content consumer has been an early adopter of the connected TV phenomenon, and this audience base is exponentially growing. From an advertiser’s standpoint, connected TV will give them a tremendous opportunity to engage with consumers. They will be able to collect a lot more data about consumer behaviour based on what they watch, when they watch it, and how they react.
The future is indeed fascinating. As the Internet of Things with its machine-to-machine communication capability picks up, the smart TV could end up becoming the central hub of the smart (connected) home. We will pick up this subject some other day. For the time being, get, set, ready for CTV!
The author of this article is TV9 Network chief growth officer (broadcast & digital) Raktim Das.
