LAS VEGAS – Consumers are living in an age in which there’s almost an expectation that any product or service that they purchase will be customized. In an interview with Beet.TV, Jim Cridlin, global head of innovation and partnerships at Mindshare explains that television is now headed on this path.
“You see a tremendous explosion in the technologies that can produce content, the companies out there that are producing content, and the distribution opportunities to get that content in front of an individual,” says Cridlin.
Anything that can capture data can work to create an individualized experience for somebody. For this reason, the TV watching experience will be customized down to the very consumer not long from now. One encouraging result of this is that previously underserved communities now have content that’s on-demand and is targeted towards them.
“Our team here in North America recognized that LGBTQ journalism and content was suffering because white lists and block lists were automatically filtering out that content from advertising dollars,” says Cridlin. “So we created a private marketplace of those approved publishers to ensure that that content continued to live because we believe that in the future that content is going to be important.”
The television that watchers are accustomed to already doesn’t look the same as far as devices and set top boxes. Cridlin says that we’ll also start seeing television taking a common experience and making it more unique to the individual.
In particular, he references a technology he saw at CES that gives TV watchers an earpiece and allows individuals to select volume levels as well as tune into particular parts of a program like background music or dialogue. He describes seeing glasses that can literally rearrange letters for readers that suffer from dyslexia. According to Cridlin, augmented reality delivery devices will start to make their way into TV, too.
“If there are glasses that overlay some type of experience on top of the content you’re watching,” Cridlin says. “That could be an even more interesting way of delivering a personalized television experience.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of advanced TV at CES 2020 presented by Amobee and hosted by GroupM Worldwide. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
