Our customer, Univision, had a successful Latin Social TV Awards at the Social TV Summit in Miami.

Univision received awards in eight categories, including the Best Broadcast Network Latin Social TV Award. Univision’s digital network, UVideos, won two of the awards: The Best Online Video Latin Social TV Award, and the Best Mobile Phone, iPad or Tablet Latin Social TV Application Award.

Arktan is proud to be powering UVideos’ social platform, including its real-time social conversation, and the site’s many innovative, industry-first features. One such feature is UVideos’ time-syncing feature that supports the DVR capability for live and on-demand video playbacks of Univision shows.

When viewers watch videos of the shows after live programming, they are able to see all the social and on-site comments played back to them as they occurred during the original live programming of the shows.

Here’s a link to our recent blog post with more details about UVideos' award-winning social platform.

Our recent blog post talked about the rise in time-shifted viewing. This trend among others is increasingly driven by Hispanics, who have been emerging as a powerful U.S. demographic influencing brands across industries from mobile to digital to music to TV.

Data from 2012 portrayed Hispanics as early adopters of new technology, eager to consume  quality content on multiple platforms, especially on mobile, spending an estimated $500 million on mobile apps by the end of 2012. Meanwhile, Nielsen study projects Hispanics’ buying power to increase from $1 trillion in 2010 to $1.5 trillion in 2015.

The rising influence of Hispanics has not gone unnoticed. Univision, the leading provider of Spanish-language programming for Hispanics, launched in late 2012 UVideos, the first bilingual digital network for Hispanic America, in partnership with Arktan that powered UVideos’ social platform. UVideos was launched to fill the need expressed by Hispanics for more engaging Spanish-language content available across multiple platforms and devices, especially mobile.

Others in the broadcast industry are starting to follow suit, most recently CNN that just announced a new venture, CNN Latino, providing Spanish-language programming for Hispanics.

The Social TV industry is also starting to take notice of Hispanic viewers. Social TV Summit, the leading industry event, will shine a spotlight on the Hispanic, Latin and South American markets at its next event in April. Univision will be the Platinum Sponsor of the event that will culminate in the Latin Social TV Awards ceremony.

Social TV Summit in San Francisco on April 3 hosted lively panel discussions and presentations by executives from many leading brands in the Social TV space. Here is a summary of the key themes that emerged from the presentations and discussions.

Social TV Industry
Social TV industry is still relatively new, yet polling at the event showed that the majority believes the space has already too many players, and it’s ripe for some consolidation. On the other hand, the majority also believed that there are still opportunities in the space for innovative companies. 

Social TV is not just something that happens. The industry needs to keep innovating to find out what are the best platforms for different ways of engagement. Technology is driving the innovation, and TV networks are among the key players in this new disruptive technology landscape with their ability to meet the scale demands. Social TV second-screen experiences in the meantime provide the audience engagement platform for the shows. 

Social TV Industry Segmentation
Some industry segmentation is apparent. Vendors like Shazam are building engaging apps with exclusive content that drives engagement. Then there are TV networks and companies like WWE, who are building second-screen Social TV experiences around their shows on their own sites and apps. There are also social brands, like Pepsi, who have partnered with TV networks. Andrea Harrington from Pepsi spoke about how Pepsi has been able to successfully leverage its brand marketing expertise and experience to provide highly engaging user experiences around “The X Factor”. 

Social TV Viewers
Social TV viewers are engaged, and demand quality content that is relevant. They are used to multi-tasking across multiple platforms on multiple devices. This is especially applicable with youth and the younger generations. This multitasking has extended to TV. Meanwhile, social media usage has exploded on mobile, having increased by 600% in the last two years, according to Deirdre Bannon from Nielsen. She added that almost 90% of those owning a tablet use them while watching TV.

Christy Tanner from TV Guide spoke about the underlying need people have to connect and interact with each other other. This is highly relevant for TV networks, because people also have the power through social media to influence what shows the networks decide to broadcast. TV shows drive emotion, and social media has provided the platform for viewers to engage and interact with each other, and with the TV shows and their casts. 

The casts and stars of the TV shows are naturally curious to know what viewers are saying about them on Facebook and Twitter, and they follow fans’ tweets and posts very closely. This fan feedback also gives them ideas for making their shows better. For example, "The X Factor" celebrity judge Simon Cowell has been known to modify the content of the shows based on fan feedback from social media.

Social TV Research and Analytics
Social TV research and analytics is emerging as an important part of the industry, helping, for example, brands gauge which TV shows generate the most buzz, what is the mood and sentiment of viewers, and what is driving viewers. The networks are very interested in this data, since increased social media buzz is directly related to TV show ratings. Data from Nielsen shows that 9% increase in buzz translates into 1% increase in ratings.

The shows with the most social audience are the shows that also generate the most buzz on social media networks. Jason Hoch from WWE spoke about this, and gave as an example  “Wrestlemania XXVIII”. The show generated more social media buzz than the NCAA Final Four.

Conclusion
The Social TV space is new, but dynamic, and evolving fast. Some key players have already emerged across different segments in the industry. Technological development continues to facilitate innovation across the board, while TV networks together with brands are working to develop new, better ways to engage the Social TV viewer.

The Social TV world will gather tomorrow at the annual Social TV Summit in San Francisco. This highly anticipated, sold out event is expected to feature exciting presentations and panel discussions by many leading brands, TV networks, and product companies in the Social TV and Social Media space. Arktan is a proud co-sponsor of the event.

Social TV Summit has set up a designated page on their website for the real-time social conversation taking place on the Social Web around the event. The page is called Social Chatter, and it’s powered by Arktan.

Social Chatter is a destination site for those unable to attend the event. It allows page visitors to interact with the real-time speaker presentations and attendee conversations, and all other conversation taking place on the Social Web around the event. The different page tabs allow visitors to choose the content to view, and engage in chat. Event participants can also use Social Chatter to share their experiences in real-time.

At the event location, Social TV Summit will have multiple big screens, powered by Arktan, that will display the real-time, curated conversation taking place around the event on the Social Web. The screens will give event participants a very unique experience of being at the event, while being simultaneously able to view the conversation taking place about the event on the Social Web.

We are very excited about tomorrow’s event, and will write much more about it in a future blog post, so stay tuned!