Tag Archives: Video on Demand

AI, Digital Assistant, Technology

Hostess with the Mostest – Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, Google Assistant

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Application Integration Opportunities:

  • Microsoft Office, Google G Suite, Apple iWork
    • Advice is integrated within the application, proactive and reactive: When searching in Microsoft Edge, a blinking circle representing Cortana is illuminated.  Cortana says “I’ve collected similar articles on this topic.”  If selected, presents 10 similar results in a right panel to help you find what you need.
  • Personal Data Access and Management
    • The user can vocally access their personal data, and make modifications to that data; E.g. Add entries to their Calendar, and retrieve the current day’s agenda.

Platform Capabilities: Mobile Phone Advantage

Strengthen core telephonic capabilities where competition, Amazon and Microsoft, are relatively week.

  • Ability to record conversations, and push/store content in Cloud, e.g. iCloud.  Cloud Serverless recording mechanism dynamically tags a conversations with “Keywords” creating an Index to the conversation.  Users may search recording, and playback audio clips +/- 10 seconds before and after tagged occurrence.
Calls into the User’s Smartphones May Interact Directly with the Digital Assistant
  • Call Screening – The digital assistant asks for the name of the caller, purpose of the call, and if the matter is “Urgent”
    • A generic “purpose” response, or a list of caller purpose items can be supplied to the caller, e.g. 1) Schedule an Appointment
    • The smartphone’s user would receive the caller’s name, and the purpose as a message back to the UI from the call, currently in a ‘hold’ state,
    • The smartphone user may decide to accept the call, or reject the call and send the caller to voice mail.
  • A  caller may ask to schedule a meeting with the user, and the digital assistant may access the user’s calendar to determine availability.  The digital assistant may schedule a ‘tentative’ appointment within the user’s calendar.
    • If calendar indicates availability, a ‘tentative’ meeting will be entered. The smartphone user would have a list of tasks from the assistant, and one of the tasks is to ‘affirm’ availability of the meetings scheduled.
  • If a caller would like to know the address of the smartphone user’s office, the Digital Assistant may access a database of “generally available” information, and provide it. The Smartphone user may use applications like Google Keep, and any note tagged with a label “Open Access” may be accessible to any caller.
  • Custom business workflows may be triggered through the smartphone, such as “Pay by Phone”.  When a caller is calling a business user’s smartphone, the call goes to “voice mail” or “digital assistant” based on smartphone user’s configuration.  If the user reaches the “Digital Assistant”, there may be a list of options the user may perform, such as “Request for Service” appointment.  The caller would navigate through a voice recognition, one of many defined by the smartphone users’ workflows.

Platform Capabilities: Mobile Multimedia

Either through your mobile Smartphone, or through a portable speaker with voice recognition (VR).

  • Streaming media / music to portable device based on interactions with Digital Assistant.
  • Menu to navigate relevant (to you) news,  and Digital Assistant to read articles through your portable media device (without UI)

Third Party Partnerships: Adding User Base, and Expanding Capabilities

In the form of platform apps (abstraction), or 3rd party APIs which integrate into the Digital Assistant, allowing users to directly execute application commands, e.g. Play Spotify song, My Way by Frank Sinatra.

  • Any “Skill Set” with specialized knowledge: direct Q&A or instructional guidance  – e.g Home Improvement, Cooking
  • eCommerce Personalized Experience – Amazon
  • Home Automation – doors, thermostats
  • Music – Spotify
  • Navigate Set Top Box (STB) – e.g. find a program to watch
  • Video on Demand (VOD) – e.g. set to record entertainment

 

Entertainment

Key to Success for Content Providers Offering Stand-Alone Web Subscription Services

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CBS to Offer Stand-Alone Web Subscription Service – NYTimes.com.

The distribution channel must provide unique content through their channel or they run the risk of being a commodity rights owner that is only providing archived content.

Amazon brought it home for me when they hosted a single pilot produced by a partner production group. If the test markets had strong viewer ratings, more episodes can be ordered.

This will turn the dial from just an archive distribution rights platform ‘business model’, eventually a commodity, to a creative media value added service. This shifts the focus to creative content along the brand focus.

  • CBS produces or sponsors a pilot episode. CBS then advertises, short on air promos, web ads for the target demographic methods, etc. CBS gauges the popularity of the show. If market demand is strong, the provider can order more episodes.
  • Content providers can also provide unique content from their existing proprietary, content. ‘Web subscription only’ series episodes, available through their web subscription service.

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Technology

Netflix Brings in Unique Content through Brand Alignment Deals

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It has been announced that Netflix will utilize several Marvel Comics / Universe content to broadly expand their unique streaming offering.  However, we will now look to see the new user interface to provide additional guidance for future potential content of it’s viewers.  A new Netflix user interface will guide your selection based upon ‘friend’ or ‘family profiles’ suggestions.  If this information is then aggregated by Netflix for Business Intelligence Analysis, we will see what content brands are requested most, by demographic categories, and then targeting these brands for acquisition of unique content deals.

Business Intelligence about our user’s content stream selections, in the aggregate, will drive future deals for unique content.

Business, Technology

User Interface Usability and Video On Demand Content from Distribution Portals

Cable and phone companies are competing in their marketing campaigns for high speed and cost.  There are many more attributes, features, they can compare and contrast between their competition to show leading edge.  For example, the industry association may hire an independent user interface usability organization to show who’s system is the most user friendly, i.e. easier to use.  E.g. a study by an independent body declares N has the easiest system to use, and provides the most functionality.

Another measure of comparison between content distributors might be how much content is available on demand, roughly, for Free, Premium, and On Demand, Paid content.  I had all the providers in my area, and found that one interface made it easier to see how much content was available for video on demand, e.g. the user interface made their content more transparent, and it appeared one provider had significantly more content than another.  There are may features video content distributors can highlight in their commercial advertising with a bullet point scroll, video shot.  There are significant feature advantages that may differentiate these providers, and I don’t know why a comparison chart has not been made available.

Advertising, Business, Entertainment, Technology

Opportunities for Viral Exposure of Amazon and Netflix Unique Content

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It is completely unclear to me why Amazon and Netflix have not developed a widget that allows anyone with a blog, or website to incorporate a particular type of video player widget.  Amazon Associates does have static images for their movies so their associates can enable these plugins on their web sites.  There is also the opportunity to earn some revenue with click through as well as if the click through turns into revenue.  Netflix should also adopt a similar model.  It seems they advertise with select partners. 

What neither company has to drive more revenue is a video widget plugin that allows any blogger to embed it in their site, and plays a trailer of video, a 30 second clip, looped.  This video, once clicked, links to a free view of their  unique content video hosted on the vendor’s site.  The viewers are obligated to rate the video if they want to qualify for a discount.  If it’s a streaming video service such as Netflix,  the discount can be applied to a month of service, or if it’s the purchase of a movie on demand, the discount may be applied to another video of unique content.   They should also track back the revenue earned to the blogger site to pay a nominal referral fee.