The excitement around demonstrating our reenvisaged new SaaS platform at IBC 2022 in Amsterdam this September is more than warranted. It’s been a lot of work from a great team and it will be wonderful to show off the resulting product – it’s a game changer.
The use of streaming technology is fundamentally changing. No longer an exclusive distribution outlet for the TV industry, it is quickly becoming an invaluable sales and marketing tool used by thousands of businesses across multiple industries - and our new platform underpins it all.
If that’s the vision, it’s the platform’s architectural “pillars”, identified in our recent series of articles, that actually make it happen: design, metadata, markets, and, as we explore below, the all-important fourth pillar that unites them all: coalescence.
In fact, as its name implies, this is possibly more of a “lintel” than a pillar – the connection that sits atop and between all the other elements, enabling radically seamless control and delivery of streaming content that binds markets and audiences to the service, driving exceptional business results through a direct relationship with consumers.
Here’s how it works.
Tools to flexibly design, re-design and re-brand your service, perhaps for just a special day or event, are pretty compelling.
As is, indeed, the ability to define your own metadata and instantly map audience feedback to how they prefer to discover and organise the service.
And so, not least, is the addition of markets that enable you to segment audiences based on user data or business logic – powerful stuff!
But when you combine these three pillars, you can truly start to use streaming as a potent industry tool like never before.
And this isn’t just about streaming content to your own audiences. You could strike a commercial deal with multiple D2C (Direct to Consumer) outlets; let’s say supermarkets. Your business could then, within the same service, create separate markets for each supermarket. They could apply a completely different design for each market, and then drive the user experience by their own uniquely created supermarket metadata.
It’s easy to see how this might result in a number of supermarket direct-to-TV digital video stores, with playlists branded as, say, Sainsbury's “View the Difference”, Tesco’s “Viewing’s Finest”, Co-op’s “Truly Irresistible Viewing” or Asda’s “Extra Special Viewings” – you get the picture!
The point is that commercial flexibility combined with to the ability to create unique audiences and viewing experiences opens up a universe of business opportunities.
And we can take this further still with the concept of creating a virtual studio, hall or stadium for hire.
The venue operator benefits because they can sell a concert promoter their own fully branded virtual venue (a market), giving them the ability to own the branding and venue for the duration of the event, and to influence the consumer journey by creating and cleverly using metadata.
Who might run this type of service? A major label or music promoter. A Ticketmaster. An Eventbrite. A Coca-Cola or other major brand.
And that’s the point. Streaming is a powerful tool that can be used for anyone, and the new Easel TV platform is the ultimate realisation of a streaming platform that can deliver this.
As we’ve previously noted in this series of articles, streaming is opening up to more industries and across multiple businesses and content owners.
But they all have one thing in common: they’re all looking to connect more closely to streaming audiences - most often commercially, occasionally for altruistic or pure marketing reasons - and they’re looking do this streaming themselves. In our parlance, they’re “going it alone”.
For this to work, the streaming platform has to be flexible, controllable, and easily tailorable to diverse audiences and markets.
No waiting (and paying) for a platform provider to make changes to the service. No waiting (and paying) for special events promotions. No waiting (and paying) for a streaming platform provider to determine who can see and watch what, when, on what device, at what price point. And no waiting for device manufacturers to approve and constantly re-approve these malleable apps and services.
Do it all yourself rapidly and easily, roll it out simultaneously to all devices, and make content discoverable, compelling, and differentiated across all audiences and markets. Football nuts who could be adult males in Moss Side, children in Mayo, or female university students in Miami; multiple hotel or retail chains; foodies who want content based on diverse culinary interests.
It is coalescence that makes all this possible. It gets the right content to the right consumers, packaged in the right way, to keep them there and bring them back - with the right commercial outcomes for the streaming businesses and content owners.
It’s much more than the sum of its parts!
For the full story of the pillars that coalescence harnesses within our new platform, check out our previous articles on design, metadata, and markets, and find out why effective, cost-efficient streaming for all in a brave new world of content fragmentation will be born in Amsterdam (via London!) in September.
We’d be delighted to see you there.
To meet us at IBC 2022, just come along to stand 5.c44 at the RAI Amsterdam, 9 – 12 September, or if you’d like to schedule a meeting with us contact us here.
Easel TV
1 Waterhouse Square
London EC1N 2ST
T: +44 (0)20 3026 3605
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