• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, September 13, 2013

Innovid and Cisco are teaming up at the big IBC show in Amsterdam  (it started yesterday) to demonstrate advanced personalized second screen advertising gizmology that will, of course, enrich the viewing experience and/or de-enrich the viewers’ wallets if the advertising is doing its job.

I think I’ve counted up the dimes I’d have for every new advertising solution that is a lead pipe cinch to capture second-screen viewers (“harness the potential,” I think they call it).  I’d be a rich man. (As that rich man, I imagine I’d be at IBC right now, for example.)

 But I don’t crack wise. I think Innovid/Cisco are fully capable of making these devices do all those monetizing things. But you must admit this second screen potential-harnessing is big business in the online video advertising world.

Innovid and Cisco are promising two new products. One deals with contextual, relevant commercials that can appear on the second screen without interrupting the television viewing experience on the original screen. That lets advertisers get a better viewing target and offer consumers a personal exchange with product purveyors. I hesitate to say, as Innovid and Cisco do, that this will create an “enjoyable” experience, but that’s me. I usually don’t find the machinery that allows me to be a “better” consumer all that thrilling. If it’s efficient, functional and useful, that’s about all I ask.  

 A second solution will demonstrate how service providers can target consumers based on location via tablet. After viewing a video on an iPad, the viewer will get pitched an advertisement for a restaurant or some other business, geographically chosen based on info Cisco and Innovid have compiled. Again, the proof is in the pudding (and it’s especially good if the pudding store is less than a mile away). A lot of devices promise/hope/actually deliver some version of the products Innovid and Cisco are showing off at Amsterdam. It just depends how much they cost, how well they work and how interested consumers are in using them.   

Tal Chalozin, Innovid co-founder and chief technical officer who is nothing if not self-conscious when he delivers hype, seems to realize, in his canned quote, that saying and doing are two different things. “As the television business rapidly evolves, there are plenty of opportunities for service providers to capitalize on its future," he says here, before expressing his excitement about working with Cisco to make those ad solutions a “reality.” And Innovid’s Ad Server and iRoll have both feet in the interactive engagement space on multiple devices. Everybody, including them, are getting ramped up for a big OTT bust out in the next year. By 2016, (my guess) only your grandparents will be watching TV the way most of us are still watching it now.     

Obviously, someday all of this will be very second nature, and even more fun as the price of tablets goes down and households have three or four second screens, which might as well, at that point,  be considered giant credit cards waiting to be swiped by merchants faraway and right next door. We are at least halfway there. Sometimes, I admit, I do feel I could find it all
“enjoyable.” I’ll get back to you on that.   

pj@mediapost.com

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