DENVER — At this week’s Fierce Video Stream TV Show, a panel of executives from smart TV manufacturers talked about the momentum in their industry.
One interesting tidbit in their discussion was about Vizio’s new technology called Jump Ads. In March, Vizio launched its beta version of Jump Ads, which can prompt viewers to leave a linear TV environment and take them to a streaming environment.
*Update 6/10/2022: After publication of this story, Vizio reached out and said the product was beta-launched as Jump Ads but the name of the product available in the market is called Jump View.
Fox was the first partner to test the feature, placing an overlay Jump Ad after the first episode of its new comedy series “Welcome to Flatch.” The Jump Ad prompts viewers to continue watching on the Fox Now app.
At the StreamTV Show the technology came up as part of a discussion about the popular TV series “Yellowstone,” which is created by Paramount. Even though Paramount owns current seasons of the show, it won’t point viewers to earlier seasons of the show on Comcast’s Peacock streaming service.
Paramount won’t send viewers to Peacock for competitive reasons. But it wouldn't be a problem, technologically.
Speaking with Fierce Video, analyst Colin Dixon, principal with nScreenMedia, said, “I think it’s a feature that should be a basic part of all TVs, the ability to connect content from one place to content in another place.”
He said automatic content recognition (ACR) technology can tell what a viewer is watching. Technology like Jump Ads can insert a carot that might say something like “If you want to watch more episodes, click here.”
Dixon said, “They’ve had this functionality in Europe for over decade,” where it’s called hybrid broadcast broadband TV. HbbTV is a global initiative to provide open standards for the delivery of advanced interactive TV services through broadcast and broadband networks.
The technology is there, either through HbbTV or Vizio’s Jump Ads.
Taking stock of smart TVs
The executives went on to reminisce about the time 15 years ago when the idea of a smart TV for streaming video was first being conceived.
Nick Colsey, VP of business development with Sony Electronics, said the company first announced a smart TV in 2007 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). “It was about keeping the TV relevant,” he said. “In 2005 people were starting to watch things on their PC or getting a cable and hooking it up to their TV. The TV would become a dumb monitor.”
He said all of the companies represented on the StreamTV panel — Sony, Samsung, LG, Vizio — were independently thinking along the same lines. They needed to figure out a way to keep TVs relevant in a streaming world.
Fast forward to today, and smart TVs are a vibrant platform for streaming video.
Susan Agliata, director of business development and OTT partnerships at Samsung, said she doesn’t like Samsung’s smart TV business to be compared to MVPDs. Agliata said, “I think it’s a very different market. It’s in our best interest to get apps on our platform. It works for us and our partners. We look at ourselves as an enabler. We want this content on our platform.”
Katherine Pond, vice president of business development with Vizio, also touted the fact that Vizio partners with content providers. She said, “It’s a desire to be a complete entertainment solution. We have the hardware, software, content and data. It’s really all those things coming together.”
Sony's Colsey had a little different perspective.
“We’re an entertainment company,” said Colsey. So, Sony-produced shows are part of the Sony smart TV user experience. The company is also a co-owner of Crackle, and it has a partnership with Xumo. “We give them a little more deeper integration,” he said.