Making TV Apps Count

Potential fan favorites, flops, Emmy award winners, and stinkers are all about to compete for… an icon on your mobile device.

I'm not talking about TV programming or services. Rather, a flood of TV-related apps are being hurried out of the lab and onto the showroom floor of your favorite app store. While some of these apps are already capturing rave reviews, others are already on the road to cancellation.

With mobile device penetration and multitasking during TV viewing at an all-time high, players throughout the TV ecosystem are eagerly jockeying to find their position on the little screen. Since the market for TV-related apps is just in its infancy, everyone is experimenting to find just the right recipe to attract users, create compelling experiences, and leverage their business model or strategic position.

Some industry players are cooking up very basic apps that provide little more than program information and a platform to display ads. Others are blending together interesting, full-featured apps that provide interactivity, special content, social networking features, and games.

For players in the TV industry, the app represents a way to address unique industry challenges.

For broadcasters, who rely upon ad revenues as their primary business model, mobile devices have taken ad-skipping to a new level. Rather than running to the kitchen for a snack, viewers now use ad breaks as a chance for more quality time with their smartphones and tablets. Broadcasters see the second screen as a chance to limit ad-skipping by providing users with a compelling reason to stay engaged with their programming during the break.

Pay-TV providers are interested in a different kind of skipping, as in subscribers skipping out on them to other services, including OTT or direct competitors. For years, if consumers wanted to find content, the EPG was the only game in town. The growth of mobile devices has changed that dynamic, and many consumers are learning about programming through Web searches, social media, and other tools available via smartphones and tablets.

Surveys of US broadband homes show that one-third of smartphone and tablet owners use their devices to find out more information about the content that they are watching. As subscribers take their eyes off the TV and the EPG, they can encounter other content options. Mobile apps provide pay-TV providers with a way to stay front-and-center as the viewer's primary interface to content.

Networks and other content creators are interested in building and maintaining an engaged audience for their programming. After all, high ratings lead to more ad dollars and a greater likelihood of a program being picked up for a new season. Many content creators see apps and second-screen experiences as a chance to keep audiences interested outside the primary broadcast window, both between episodes and between whole seasons.

Ultimately, consumers are unlikely to use all of the apps put in front of them. Some players will enjoy strong adoption of their app attempts. Others will find their apps haunting the depths of the app popularity rankings. To be successful, TV apps and second-screen experiences should: