Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SPOTT (Pioneering ICT-platform setting the new standard on advertising and how consumers shop)

Teaser

Traditional advertising, e .g. through television commercials and digital advertisement, is a proposition that is no longer accepted by the audience. This is proven by the fact that 84% of all TV-advertising gets fast-forwarded, 41% of the audience finds smartphone...

Summary

Traditional advertising, e .g. through television commercials and digital advertisement, is a proposition that is no longer accepted by the audience. This is proven by the fact that 84% of all TV-advertising gets fast-forwarded, 41% of the audience finds smartphone advertisements intrusive and 26% of all Internet users are installing ad blockers. The impact of not having an alternative can endanger the future of media as a whole, as still large parts of the income streams consist of advertisements. The only known alternatives to reach the audience are branded content, product placement, social media such as Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Twitter, and so on, whisking the income away from the European market.

In addition to the decreasing revenues, a major challenge arises as digital advertising campaigns prove to be a significant cost to the European local store and brands, resulting in a lack of visibility and therefore a lack of audience. As many as 30% of all retail and wholesale businesses in Europe are SMEs of which 94% are local stores. The biggest international e-commerce businesses operate globally and are strengthened by strong branding, scale economies, and operational efficiencies that local stores cannot compete with.

SPOTT combines the reach of the television with the targeting power of digital media and the revenue-generating power of e-commerce, making video content interactive by adding metadata in an hyper-scalable way. Due to the audience’s risen interest to interact with content, a new way of doing business is upon us, linking video content to products available in online and offline stores on no matter what screen.

To the broadcasters & publishers, SPOTT is a new way to make commercials relevant again. By making content interactive SPOTT adds extra value to commercials and lets the audience interact with them.
This will allow them to gradually pivot from standardized advertising solutions proven not to work anymore towards better forms of advertising: personalized and interactive ads, interactive product placement & branded content.

To the brands and retailers, SPOTT functions as a facilitator to link user interactions with their content to personalized dashboards. These allow them to get real-time insights into the full marketing funnel (AIDA), the efficiency of their investment and showing what content are best suited for their brands.
Spott will allow them to better understand what part of their marketing is working and why. They will be able to directly link ROI to every specific asset the produced and platforms and partners they have worked with.

Work performed

All of our clients are focussing on 4 different categories of media assets:
Owned media assets: all the domains which the clients own, like website, newsletter, own application, ...
Shared media assets: all the domains which the client rents, or exchanges, from other partners, like publishers websites, bloggers, influencers, ...
Earned media assets: all the domains on social media, which generate “earned media” because people are talking about the client, like Facebook, Instagram, but also PR
Paid media assets: all the domains which are being paid by the client, like display banners, advertising, …

Based on the evolution in the market towards multi-channel content strategies (for all of the above channels and assets), we have learned that it is not efficient nor preferred by the market to develop ‘just’ one channel i.e. Spott.tv. The clear preference (and the biggest impact we can make for our clients), is allowing the interactivity on every channel. Therefore, we decided to reallocate resources related to Spott.tv to adapt and expand the features towards a multichannel approach. In other words, every feature is foreseen for Spott.tv (as a B2C platform) will be adapted and expanded so interactivity can be offered on every channel (as a B2B platform). This allows us to bring much more value to our core prospects as they are now able to use interactivity on every channel they actively manage, plus also a more easy integration as the conversion (=transactions) and the people who interact with the content and do a purchase becomes a new client of our client (instead of Spott’s client).

Based on the progress made, we were able to close strategic reseller partnerships with companies like Microsoft, Publicis, SAPO, Delaware allowing us to activate their sales networks for us.

Today, we work together with companies like Lidl, Colruyt, Benetton, GoSeeTV, Elle Magazine,... .

During the second half of the H2020 project, we will be able to scale up the value and revenues based on the progress made on development and the first prove of value in the market.

Final results

We made significant structural improvements to maintainability, scalability, feature richness and ease of use including multi-tenancy and cloud architecture improvements. Next to that, we have been able to mature our interactivity engine allowing scalable second-by-second enrichment of videos, no matter what the length of the video.

Users of Spott are now able to add various level of interactivity on pictures and videos: purchases, link physical stores, subscriptions, ticketing, picture-in-video and video branching. As a next step, we allow our users to publish the result on different channels: television, set-top box, own website, 3rd party websites, 3rd party video player platforms and social media.

Allowing the grand public to use this service as a Software as a Service (SaaS), will allow those that have relevant content to generate more value out of it. This will allow that producing relevant content will become more important in the marketing mix that paid advertising. In other words: today content is made in function of paid advertising whilst paid advertising should ‘only’ function as a catalyst of great content.

Publishers & broadcasters will be able to generate more value out of their own strength: producing great content for their audience. Introducing interactivity will allow a more seamless integration of advertising in their content on their website allowing them from a defensive position today towards an offensive and growing strategy tomorrow.

Advertisers (brands & retailers) only have limited means to understand what kind of publisher they should work with to reach their audience. Spott allows them to understand with whom they should partner with to get their message across to their fans and allow immediate conversion. And all of this measurable.

We believe to have cracked the nut on how to streamline the online and offline world in a way they reinforce each other. A lot of advertisers are only able to support online sales via advertising efforts. This leads directly to a further deterioration of the shopping street. Next to that, there is an absolute business need to keep and reinforce that same shopping street as a lot of products are still bought offline. Just think about jewellery, shoes, high-end fashion clothing, watches, eyewear,... .

By making online content & online advertising interactive and directly linking that content to physical stores, we allow for the first time ROI of online marketing translated into offline sales. By offering this to the market, we hope to contribute to generate a mutual reinforcement between the online- and offline world.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.spott.ai.