Broadcasters enjoy enormous audiences, but, at least until now, had a hard time knowing who their viewers really were. Was it 20-year-old John with an interest in biking or 40-year-old Kathy more interested to shop-around-the-clock? A team of VRT-medialab researchers think they have found the solution to give broadcasters greatly enhanced knowledge of whom is consuming their programming. And their solution benefits television stations in a second way too: it takes away the fear for the 'second screen'.
CRM
The keyword in the system proposed by the media researchers is 'Customer Relationship Management' (CRM). Although a common element in retail, CRM has never really taken off in broadcasting, as the information-flow mainly is unidirectional. But now virtually everybody seems to have an iPad, Smarthphone or another 'always-on, Internet-connected' device, the door is open to use that 'second screen' to capture and relay what television show its owner is watching. By enriching the received information with socio-demographic data, the broadcaster can get to know its consumers and employ it in real time for additional benefits, such as segmented and targeted advertisements. Live deployment
|  A prototype 'second screen' application |
According to researchers Robbie de Sutter and Lode Nagtergaele, the technology to inform broadcasters of their audience in real-time is now available, and with a most-attractive granularity too: in the order of seconds. The researchers have implemented a trial system using cloud services to absorb peak-loads which otherwise would require expensive IT infrastructure at the broadcaster's side. They are so confident their system works, that it will go on-air summer 2011, during a live TV show.
If you want to learn more about this new way of doing audience research or if you need some ideas of how to build your own system (or if you are not familiar yet with IT nomenclature such as 'Hadoop', 'Sqoop' and 'Grails'), you should certainly check out this EBU Technical Review article in which Robbie and Lode take a closer look at the potential of the 'second screen' for broadcasters.