Disney and Nielsen join forces to launch free iPad app

Posted by Gianluigi Cuccureddu SMP in Breaking News on September 16, 2010  |  0 Comments More from this author  |    |  Follow Gianluigi Cuccureddu SMP on: Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter |

Earlier we reported on mobile usage and a viable two-screen Social TV experience, hours later we received the news that Disney and Nielsen are joining forces to launch a free iPad application.

What can the application do?

(The My Generation Sync iPad App will be available in the app store at midnight, a week ahead of the premiere of the new ABC series it will supplement, "My Generation.")

Users who download the app can multi-task between the TV experience and the iPad, which will display polls, trivia and other content timed to be relevant to what is transpiring in the "Generation" storylines.

The app will also have a social-media element, enabling sharing, posting to Twitter, as well as "liking" to Facebook, though actual feeds won't be integrated until later iterations of the app.

Nielsen brings to the table:

Audio watermarking embedded in the broadcast that signals the iPhone through its microphone to trigger timed content.
While the technology has always been used by Nielsen strictly for measurement purposes, a new mobile-friendly upgrade opened a new ancillary business for the company and Digimarc Corp., which is teaming up with Nielsen on what it has dubbed its Media Sync Platform.

The interesting notion is that both players from inside and outside the TV industry are attempting a breakthrough in interactive television.
The combination of audio watermarking, synchronized content and social media is new, being a different approach to crack the Social TV "mystery".

What Disney and Nielsen in essence are trying to achieve is a contextual enriched experience, that can have both an active or passive character.
More and more market entrants in the TV space are adding these contextual techniques to enhance to experience of users, not only social elements are important, but relevant additional information (be it informative or commercial) will become an important part of the experience.

For advertisers this means a new and relevant way of monetisation, better relevancy means higher incomes whilst the users aren't disturbed by irrelevant advertisements.