KIT Digital Launches 2Si, Second Screen App for T-Commerce

KIT Digital is launching a white-label second screen app which it says will help prevent viewer distraction from the main TV experience.

"Broadcasters need to move way from passive second screen socialising to one that creates stickiness," explained Feargal Kelly, KIT Digital's vice president of media solutions. "When second screen apps are badly implemented they pull viewers away from the very content that is being promoted."

At IBC 2012, KIT is launching 2Si, a second screen app for broadcasters and network operators which addresses this problem.

"It's designed to implement a red button-like experience on the second screen synchronised frame-accurately to the broadcast," says Kelly. "Broadcasters should put effort into the backend, as was the case with red button apps. By using metadata it becomes possible to sync content frame-accurately."

2Si combines audio watermarking with KIT's own IP and features a "drag-and-drop" iPad application for creation and management. It can also handle multi-lingual versions, particularly useful in the U.S., says Kelly, as broadcasters look to reach the Hispanic audience.

KIT Digital believes that single-click T-commerce (selling products through an interactive television) is unpractical in most instances and suggests that a second screen experience allowing viewers to go back after the show is over and shop the product placement goods along with the advertised ones is more useful.

"This is a much more natural behavior, and, if done correctly, creates an experience that feels a lot more like shopping, which is fun, than watching advertising, which is not," says Alan Wolk, global lead analyst for KIT Digital.

This will all happen on something KIT Digital calls a Social Program Guide, a tablet-based second screen app provided by the viewer's multichannel video programming distributor that is essentially a mash-up of a remote control and an electronic program guide, with an overlay of social TV features along with Twitter and Facebook updates.

"The most exciting development in the convergence of television and the internet is going to be around personalisation and the data provided by the advent of individual second screen accounts for each member of the household," says Wolk. "That will give broadcasters the ability to finally measure exactly who in each households is actually watching -- not to mention when, where, and on what device. With personalization, we may finally start to find advertising useful, as opposed to intrusive."

Also at IBC, KIT Digital will demonstrate enhancements to its VOD Store including a new editorial and media workflow interface, which allows a single editorial process to serve multiple endpoints. The VOD Store is a set of off-the-shelf components for delivery of VOD and linear TV, including subscription and packaging management, advertising, and DRM built around the Cosmos video platform.

KIT is likely to announce VOD Store support for DECE, the consortia backing digital locker system UltraViolet.

KIT Digital at IBC booth 1.D71