TV for Me was the theme today at the Microsoft Advertising workshop on “How Consumers Want to Interact with Television” at IAB MIXX 2010. Mark Kroese, General Manager at Microsoft, led the discussion on how consumers are increasingly wanting to watch TV on their terms. He neatly presented the concept of TV for Me in five ways:

1. My content – consumers are increasingly favoring relevant content that suits their tastes. This is becoming possible with streaming services from Netflix through the Xbox where movies and TV shows are available on demand.

2. My friends – how can a shared TV experience be brought to friends and family who are located in dispersed living rooms? Many TV shows and movies are watched on the back of a recommendation from a friend. This goes one step further, allowing you to watch the content together by appointment in an online environment.

3. My schedule – as Mark points out, it is now rare to hear of people racing home to watch the latest episode of their favorite TV show. DVRs, TiVo and ESPN on Xbox Live are all helping people consume TV content around their lives and not the other way around.

4. My choice – with digital content, you can add interaction which offers up the idea of choice to the consumer. Tim Hong from EmSense stepped in at this point to offer up a case study on how an Old Spice Xbox experience measured up when they analyzed the brain waves of people exposed to this advertising.

Some of the eye-opening stats he mentioned were that:

  • people spent an average of 8.5 minutes on the Xbox destination environment
  • response rates were five times higher than traditional TV
  • brand favorability was up 29%
  • purchase consideration increased 14%

5. My screens - Gerardo Guzman, Director at Nielsen shared some insight into where TV is being consumed. It is fair to say that users will choose screens that suit the content. Given that live TV and gaming environments are suited to a larger screen, the TV still remains king of platforms. Video gaming is up 31% as is the viewing of DVDs. However, there has been an increase in alternative screens of 28% with more and more video being view on mobile devices. Two more interesting points he made were that time-shifted TV viewing is rising as is video consumption on the Internet. 

This session reinforced the points made by Seth Godin about creativity being all-important for marketers in the future. My guess is that there will be one heck of a large tribe when the launch of Kinect happens in November. 

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Thanks,

Colm