Can we improve consumer trust of Over the Top TV (OTT TV)?

Over the Top TV platforms will continue to take many forms and in the engineering of these platforms we will need to consider how consumers rate the credibility of a platform/service. The platforms may be limited to presenting film and TV content to a TV or more ambitious systems that bring multiple content forms to multiple devices. Whichever flavour of Over the Top TV platform is deployed we run the risk of losing consumers or at least selling less if they feel it’s all ‘push’ and no ‘pull’. What I mean is many platforms rely on ‘pushing’; advertising, sponsorship, promotions, etc at the consumer to increase sales. We all know there’s a huge debate around the use Social Media to help push sales - again this is ‘push’. As soon as we present an organisation on any Social Media platform then the natural response is people become sceptical.

We need to think of Social Media as providing the backbone of independent ratings of the service, the content, etc. Some of this happens through people sharing links for content and services on Social Media sites but it’s possible to extend it to encouraging people to evangelise (or not). The collective opinions, like an ebay rating, are what give people an enhanced reason to buy in. The Internet has made this industry (and many others) near instantaneous: we expect any content, any time, any where and on any device. We will all need to be mindful that this also applies to consumer tastes and their opinions on a particular company, marketing campaign or piece of content.

BCi continues to provide Thought Leadership, Consultancy, Architecture, System Integration and Test services for all type of on demand platforms. Feel free to call Mark Hooper on +44 (0)2380 988606 or email him on mark.hooper@bci.eu.com.