itvt

At the IBC tradeshow in Amsterdam last September, OpenTV unveiled OpenTV Participate, an end-to-end server-based solution for the creation  and real-time management of mass-participation TV events synchronized with live or pre-recorded TV shows. According to OpenTV, the product–which is based on the proprietary UltimateOne system that the company acquired via its purchase of BettingCorp and which features modular J2EE-based business logic–allows programmers to offer viewers real-time competitions, quizzes, auctions, voting, and games, with viewer participation being enabled via a range of consumer devices such as landline phones, mobiles, PC’s and TV. The product thus represents an expansion of OpenTV’s technology portfolio into cross-platform interactivity.

The OpenTV executive in charge of OpenTV Participate is Amos Manasseh, the company’s VP of global sales and marketing for participation TV. He recently spoke to [itvt]’s Tracy Swedlow about the platform, its feature set, its target market, and more.

[itvt]

: What is OpenTV Participate?

Manasseh: OpenTV Participate is a modular solution for broadcasters and programmers that enables the creation, broadcast and real-time analysis of interactive participation events on any platform, combined with powerful CRM and marketing tools to manage the resulting relationship with the viewer.

The idea is that programmers can increase revenue and viewer loyalty through engaging viewer participation, and through a customer-centric approach to managing the relationship with their hard-won viewers.

One of the key features is support for marketing activities with detailed real-time usage analysis. The system can track and analyze anonymous and account-based interactions, has integrated CRM tools, including customer-care, loyalty, lifetime value, and viewer-retention functions, and supports interactive partners and sponsors on a per-event basis.

[itvt]: And the primary focus of the platform is…

Manasseh: The primary focus is to convert passive viewers into active customers through compelling interactive programming and the peripheral marketing activities around that interactive programming. So you might have a whole series of events that are synchronized with a TV show, a poll or competition or game that’s an ongoing thing sitting on the program’s Web site, and multiple peripheral activities that involve marketing to consumers–for example encouraging them to register and become part of a community, incentivizing them with loyalty points, bonus points and prizes etc. The system’s designed to attract, retain and then monetize your viewer.

[itvt]: Let’s say you’re working on a show and you want to create an interactive event over a set-top box. You can create an interactive event that’s tied to that platform, but that might also exist on the Web, mobile phones and whatever other platforms, correct?

Manasseh: Exactly.

[itvt]: I understand that the platform allows you to create and change things on the fly. How quickly do the updates take place?

Manasseh: If you are using an OpenTV Participate template, it is almost instantaneous, because integration with the presentation layer and the return path is a one-time affair. An event which uses SMS, IVR or Web will need no other tools and can be created and then broadcast instantly. We can also dynamically route data to broadcast graphics systems, enabling the event-related "call-to-action" to be instant too.

If a producer requires an interactive client-side application (such as an interactive TV application for a set-top box or a mobile application), they simply use our system for the format, scheduling and participation response management and select the application that this data will be sent to–using links which show up in our system. If the application itself is already live, updates will be fed to it in real time. Of course, live statistical analysis of incoming participations will also be instantaneous once the event has been "opened."

The way our system works is that we have our own XML protocols and a series of bridges which communicate with client-side applications, SMS and IVR providers, studio and broadcast devices, scheduling systems, automation systems, billing systems and even fulfillment systems. All the bridges relay data in real time.

[itvt]: Could you talk us through how a broadcaster might use the platform in a step-by-step fashion?

Manasseh: Basically, the system is a business-management tool. It’s designed to manage both the business of creating events and the logic for those events, and then analyzing all the viewer participation data after the event. Let’s first go through an event lifecycle:

Let’s say we’re doing a multiple-round quiz. The first thing you’d do is create the actual question content itself. There are many different ways of doing this: you can give people multiple choices, or you can do a "yes/no," or even offer free text answers with keyword filters, etc. This content can be created independently of anything else–so you can have people sitting there, creating hundreds of questions for quizzes, game shows, competitions, votes or even charity events, etc. This content essentially gets stored in a bank–a question bank, if you like.

Then you create the format for the event itself. For example, if you wanted to create the vote or quiz competition logic for a reality TV show, this is where this would be set. This step uses a simple wizard which can be saved as a template. Here you add the questions, the score logic, the win and judgment logic, and the prize logic.

The next step is to actually schedule that format. You schedule the format by creating an event. When creating an event you decide timing; whether it should be manually triggered or triggered by an external system or a mixture of the two; the platforms you wish to play out the event in; and the revenue-share for the different partners–you might have multiple partners, including sponsors, production companies, SMS aggregators or whatever. You can set partnerships on a per-event basis.

Integration of different platforms is a one-time affair using our XML protocol. The platform is then available in the system to be set for an event. The system will show short codes for SMS, interactive voice response numbers, ITV applications, Web URL’s, call centers, etc.–all active links are represented in the system, and can easily be allocated to an event.

You can also set participation filters, which means that you can decide who can participate and how many times they can participate. You might decide that viewers are only allowed to participate in this event once or that they can participate up to, say, six times. This information can even be routed to the generic terms and conditions of a competition.

Finally you can link events together. You may want to offer a simple bonus round to players who win the first round. It could be that entry into one event is conditional on having participated in another event. You might be aggregating points from multiple events, allowing the creation of a month-long competition where viewers have to play in all the events to get the grand prize. The system is dead-easy to use but very versatile.

Here is an example of a multiple-choice quiz format with five rounds: participants get one point for answering each question correctly; there will be 10 winners judged automatically by the system, when the event is closed, based on the first viewers to score the most points; first prize is four tickets to the next live recording of the show, second through fifth place get two cinema tickets, sixth through tenth get a T-shirt, and everyone who participates gets 10 loyalty points for participating.

Once you have created the event it is very simple to launch it–just press the play button. You can have multiple events running concurrently.

As I mentioned before, everything I have described can be templated. So once you’ve worked out a format for an event, the only things that you would need to change would be the prize, the question and the scheduling, and you’ve got the same event for the next show. 30 seconds and you are done.

[itvt]: So that’s basically the cycle?

Manasseh: Yes. Let me give you an example: we recently did a proof- of-concept, where a broadcaster wanted us to create a series of events and do an interactive layer for one of their existing shows. We set half a dozen interactive events, some of which were linked to others, some of which were scheduled for playout manually, and some of which were scheduled to activate automatically. Halfway through the show, which we were actually doing live, they said, "Can you quickly create another event, which will play out immediately after the commercial break?" So we created a brand new event from scratch, and were able to broadcast it within two-and-a-half minutes on both SMS and Web. The system is super-flexible.

[itvt]: Could you talk a little about the platform’s tracking and reporting capabilities?

Manasseh: Well, we’ve got some great analysis modules. Basically, this system is what I like to call a "banking-grade" server-based platform that has been designed to take transactions from any platform, without fail and securely. These transactions can be financial or participation related–it’s all the same to us. We then have a series of tools that are designed to analyze what’s happening in various different ways, depending on who you are: if you’re an accountant, you’d probably go to the accounts tool, and the reports that you’d see would be based on financial performance. If you’re a producer, you would want to see all the statistics for a show you ran last night. All this is available post-broadcast or in real-time from both the backoffice and the live producer tools.

Where the system excels is that the reporting tools are very flexible. Retention analysis is a useful example. You might want to see how many people participated in a quiz on a show at 10:00PM Monday, and then how many participated in a vote on the same show at 10:00PM Friday–was it the same group of people? Was it a completely different subset of the audience? Did they also participate in the vote on the news show just after? And so on. This ability to break down and analyze usage data over the lifetime of viewers’ interaction with your show or brand is very powerful.

In some respects, this system is bringing the power of the Web to the television. The Web’s been using tools such as this–although not nearly as vertically focused as this is–for many years.

What we’ve tried to do is to bring a lot of that methodology to the business of attracting, retaining and monetizing TV audiences. At the moment, broadcasters are creating interactive services or participation events on a one-off basis with multiple different suppliers and all sorts of one-time deals. You end up with a large integration project for each production, multiple sets of data from all the different channels and no systematic approach to managing the ongoing relationship with the viewer, the Web presence being the usual exception.

What our system does is complement investments in infrastructure and existing relationships with the different core telephony suppliers and networks by doing one-time integrations. This enables broadcasters to concentrate on their core business, which is attracting and monetizing viewers with compelling interactive events and services. From a marketing perspective, our system provides consolidated data from all viewer participations and transactions, allowing broadcasters to have a global view of their interactive business and a more customer-centric approach to their viewers. Clearly the idea is to generate secondary revenues from a variety of linked events, and incentives, and to drive uptake of other services like games, mobile TV clips, SMS alerts and merchandizing. Loyal customers will generate far more revenues than casual anonymous participants in the longer term.

[itvt]: What about live statistics?

Manasseh: The whole system is designed for real-time analysis of any activity. For live shows, we have nice tool that you have sitting in the playout center or the studio gallery. It has two functions. One is a "statistics dashboard"–literally an aggregation of all of the statistics that you have decided–using a simple wizard–that you would like to see for that particular event. For example, leader boards, the question, the answer, the prize available, the amount of participation per platform, the amount of revenue per platform, etc. The other function is the ability to control the event, so you can start it and stop it, pause it and judge it.

We generate as-run logs, which are something that’s very important to the regulatory bodies; and of course the system can create myriad reports.

[itvt]: Let’s say you want to tweak something the next day after you’ve launched the interactive event on all of these different platforms–how do you do that?

Manasseh: Its actually quite simple–you find the template, adjust the parameters, and re-launch the event.

[itvt]: Do you offer this as an ASP service at all?

Manasseh: This is a server-based system that needs to be hosted in some form of hosting facility that is connected to the Web. We believe that under most circumstances a broadcaster or a producer would want to have it in a hosting center that’s under their control, since it generates a lot of data–and revenue–that will be central to their business. It is largely dependent on traffic. The system has been designed to accommodate mass participations in real time–if you have large requirements, it will be more cost-effective to install the system in house; you will obviously be generating much more revenue and therefore the system will be core to your interactive business. However, under certain circumstances, we will look at an ASP model–perhaps for smaller broadcasters or programmers who have lower peak traffic requirements and want to get to market quickly without installing the system in house.

[itvt]: What kinds of companies are you licensing OpenTV Participate to?

Manasseh: Basically it is for broadcasters or programmers. The kind of company that would be interested in a system like this is a company that’s thinking about the following things: independent creation, scheduling and management of cross-platform interactive services events; tracking of all viewer-participation for the lifetime of the viewer; introducing effective, centralized customer relationship management; building on their existing relationship with viewers through targeted marketing and incentives; and enabling secondary revenue streams through cross-promotions, sponsorships and partnerships. There are specific tools in the system that address each of the points I just mentioned–and all of those are part of a single, modular solution. So if a company’s thinking about even just two of those, then they should be looking at buying into this system, in order to help them know their viewers, drive their interactive business and increase revenues.

[itvt]: How do you license the system?

Manasseh: The way we license this system is based on its capacity to handle transactions. The way we see it is that the more transactions that you’d like to handle concurrently, the more value the system is to you. Right?

[itvt]: Is there a limit to the number of transactions or events that you can create on a given show?

Manasseh: There’s no limit to the number of events that you can create concurrently in the system, and there’s no limit to the number of registered users that you can accommodate on the system. However, there is a limit–and that limit is what forms part of the pricing model–in terms of the concurrent transactions that you can do, because, if you think about it, if you look at some of the bigger events, they’re required to handle thousands of transactions per second, right? So that is limited both by technology and by how much you want to spend–which, of course, is defined by your business expectations. The system is scalable, so as your business grows, you can add more servers–of course, if you need to do this, then you will be making more money. We think that our system is able to accommodate more transactions than most other systems in the market right now and it is an area we have significant expertise in.

[itvt]: How open is the platform? Do you plan to distribute open API’s so that people can enhance it?

Manasseh: I will answer the second question first. We don’t believe that distributing open API’s is a direction that we want to go in, and that’s for a couple of reasons. The first is that, in many respects, the amount of functionality that we’ve put in one place is almost unprecedented. We believe that we’ve covered a lot of the core bases that need to be covered. The second reason is that the business logic layer of the system is where our IP resides. We can write new business logic and plug it into the system very easily, but we do not feel that we need to open it up at this time.

Having said that, our XML protocols are very flexible. What we have done in the past, and continue to do from time to time, is integrate with other people’s business logic using our XML protocols. For example, someone may have come up with a virtual game, the logic for which has been included in their own server. We’ll simply integrate that into our system via a bridge. So the logic happens at their end, but all the transactions happen on the system and are recorded under the same user-account, thus preserving the single view of the customer and a global view of the business.

[itvt]: So as part of selling the platform, you’re willing to do some bespoke development…

Manasseh: Yes, I’ll give you an example of that kind of thing. We have a Japanese client that had two specific requirements. One was that the entire system needed to be translated into Japanese–which is an extremely difficult thing to do. Fortunately, our system was designed from scratch to be properly multilingual. Literally every single tab and every single button were translated. We also provided the ability to enter text and other content in Japanese or English–and to switch between them at will. The other thing that they wanted to do, for obvious reasons, was to adjust the registration parameters and some of the database fields, to reflect the kind of information they wanted. This kind of adjustment is the primary type of integration activity that we find ourselves involved in. The second type of integration activity we always undertake initially is linking with the various platforms that the client wishes to broadcast to. So, for example, the Web, ITV systems, SMS aggregators, IVR providers, on-screen graphics systems, iMode sites (which are big in Japan), or call centers. Our customer-care module, which allows for call-center operators to access certain data according to their level of permission, was very important for this Japanese client: their business model allowed for viewers to conduct transactions in person on the phone. The system is quite thoroughly thought-through and is very flexible.

[itvt]: What was the genesis of OpenTV Participate?

Manasseh: The history of this platform goes back to when OpenTV acquired a company called BettingCorp. BettingCorp was comprised of two companies, one of which was a technology company, called OpenGaming, which developed the system. That company is located in Israel and is now called OpenTV Israel. It’s fully integrated into the OpenTV family. The other company was called BettingCorp, and was in the B2C channels business, rather like PlayJam. What’s now happened is that PlayJam and BettingCorp have effectively, from an operational perspective, merged. So Mickey Kalifa now runs the betting business, and his existing PlayJam business.

I joined round about the time of the acquisition. And one of the initiatives that I launched at the time was how to leverage the OpenGaming platform for a more mainstream TV-centric solution. I and the CTO of OpenGaming, Arik Faingold, basically started to devise an extrapolation of the original platform, to accommodate our vision for interactive TV going forward.

We wrote a very detailed specification document–a business requirements document–which OpenTV looked at and liked. The specification of this came from us in the first instance. We then went out to the market, to see if the market really needed something like this. We found, for example, that there was a real demand from TV businesses for a more customer-centric approach to their interactive viewers–CRM being the catch-all term usually used. During the past two years, we’ve also been involved in several RFI’s, which have confirmed our beliefs about this. We got ourselves a client, and, effectively, the product was born. We now have the full backing of OpenTV, with the solution featuring prominently in our product line-up for broadcasters and programmers. In fact, we will have our own demonstration area on OpenTV’s stand at NCTA, and the product is featuring on our stand at MipTV/Milia this year.

[itvt]: Previously, you’ve told me that OpenTV was uniquely able to develop a platform like this. Why is that?

Manasseh: First of all, OpenTV obviously made an informed decision when it bought the technology. Because it is a very powerful system. And one of the reasons that we were even able to create such a powerful solution was because it was clear that so many of the building blocks existed in the original platform. Secondly, OpenTV, whose core message is about enabling richer television, is a logical home for an initiative such as this. This initiative has been supported right up to the board level within OpenTV. I think it’s a very good fit.

It’s also a smart and logical thing for OpenTV to be doing: if you look at where interactivity has gone, obviously mobile phone-based interactivity has enjoyed a meteoric rise–not least because it’s possibly the easiest screen from which to participate. So it makes sense that OpenTV expand its horizons from pure-play set-top box-based interactive TV–which it obviously pioneered, and which still forms its core business–to something much broader: as well as enabling advanced digital interactive television, we’re now enabling interactivity via SMS, IVR, Web, and Mobile Web.

[itvt]: Do you foresee this platform being used primarily for mobile-based interactivity, set-top box-based, Web-based, or what?

Manasseh: I think that people are going to be eyeing the easy wins that make sense. Remember that almost all formats that succeed are actually quite simple. The hard bit is aggregating all the data, and finding a way of doing it in an efficient way–i.e., without 15 different suppliers and multiple integrations every time you do anything. I think our platform addresses that.

If you have an existing footprint within a digital carrier environment, then set-top-based interactive TV is an absolute no-brainer. It’s a very, very easy win; the direct connect with the viewer, not to mention the data you get, is tremendous. But if you don’t, or if you’re an analog TV channel, or if embracing the digital environment that is provided for you is prohibitively expensive when you take into account your particular audience, then this platform will be used, in fact, to the exclusion of interactive digital TV. You just have to look at the UK, which is a fairly mature market. There are several smaller channels that are doing interactive television in every sense of the word that don’t go near the red button on Sky. Their audience and their business model preclude embracing Sky’s interactive platform–brilliant as it is.

So it really depends on the size of the audience you’re going after. That’s one of the reasons why our licensing model reflects that. The smaller player, who might have a niche audience that they wish to provide with interactive entertainment, can do that very comfortably with just the Web, IVR and SMS. And they can do that using the low end of our system–it has exactly the same functionality, but just not the capacity, that the bigger players have.

On the other hand, the bigger players, perhaps the national broadcasters, would use it to enable interactivity via all channels including the set-top box. After all, two-way connectivity on a cable, satellite or IPTV set-top box, with a nice remote control is a wonderful experience.

[itvt]: I take it you are offering the platform internationally…

Manasseh: Yes. We just recently completed a sales training with our worldwide sales force. All of them came over to Israel and spent a week with us. We’re really very interested in a worldwide footprint, as we believe this platform is relevant to every single country. We’ve got interest everywhere: from the Asia-Pacific region, through to the Americas, through to central Europe. It’s a completely universal thing.

I suppose one of the most important things about this platform is that it’s complementary to your business. What we’ve tried to do is to avoid getting in the way of existing work that’s been done. Here’s an example: If you already have a relationship with a telecoms aggregator, that provides you with SMS short code numbers and IVR numbers, our system does not get in the way of that. You do a one-time integration with our system, and then you can continue to use that same relationship with the aggregator–with all the benefits it brings.

So in the set-top-based interactive digital TV world, if you’ve already worked out how your return path works, and if you’ve already worked out how your interactive application-management and broadcast systems work, our system simply augments that with a one-time integration. All you do is feed to the applications with the data that you want from our system and the rest of it happens as normal. You don’t waste that investment that you’ve already made–we just make it better and way more flexible.

The same goes for the Web and existing content-management systems. If you’re running polls, show-specific competitions and marketing initiatives throughout the day on each of your affiliate sites, our system can generate every single one of those events, and your content-management system, or whatever system you use to put your Web sites up, can just take feeds from that and enable it to happen in an automated way.

The beauty is that our platform just enhances and coordinates existing efforts in this space. It creates a classic coherence for a coordinated cross-platform interactive strategy.

URL: http://www.opentvparticipate.com

and the

http://blog.itvt.com/my_weblog/2006/01/_announcing_the.html

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