Sky Glass is the revolutionary go-to-market concept that puts the Sky entertainment OS inside a private-labelled Smart TV, removing the need for a set-top box (and removing the requirement for a satellite dish, as it is a streaming-only solution). But Reglinski emphasised that Sky Glass is an experience that can be replicated on multiple endpoints, including streaming puck set-top boxes like Sky Stream. This device takes the Sky Glass UX onto any television set via HDMI.

Where a syndication partner intends to deliver the entertainment OS inside its own Smart TVs (the ‘Smarter than a Smart TV’ vision articulated in current UK consumer advertising), they order the television hardware via Sky, which leverages its now established supply chain. “The experience can be on Sky Glass hardware or Sky Stream – and we can look at putting the experience onto other compatible devices,” Reglinski reveals.

“[Syndication partner] operators can bring their own content, apps and their own brand to the experience. Very importantly, they retain the customer relationship and the billing relationship with their customers, and they are in control of the data and the monetisation of the platform,” Reglinski explained. “The integrations can be very bespoke, depending on the operator, but obviously there will be localisation [e.g., language, content, apps]. They might want a mobile companion app. Often operators want to control how they show content, how it is merchandised, and there is a lot of flexibility in the editorial tooling.”

Sky Glass is powered by the Comcast Global Technology Platform, which is also common to Xfinity X1, Xfinity Flex (the streaming-only box that is bundled with broadband in the U.S.), Sky Q and XClass TV. XClass TV is another example of how a Pay TV operator builds its OS into a Smart TV, only this time it is the Comcast entertainment UX, and it is a third-party branded Smart TV maker that provides the hardware (i.e., Hisense models in the U.S.), sold in retail stores without the need for an Xfinity subscription (including outside of Comcast’s geographic service footprint).

Reglinski pointed to the scale of the Comcast Global Technology Platform: 75 million [broadband and streaming] connected devices are running off this now, with 40m voice commands processed a day, as an example of scale for just one advanced feature (voice search and command). The American MVPD Cox and the Canadian BDUs Shaw, Rogers and Videotron are already syndication partners for the Global Technology Platform, with Cox making use of the X1 OS/UX since late 2015.

The Syndication of Sky Glass has already begun, with Foxtel in Australia and Multichoice in South Africa signed up. “Foxtel was the first and they signed up even before the Sky Glass launch in the UK,” Reglinski confirms. “We are currently in the process of getting them onto the platform.”

Why is the Sky/Comcast group syndicating Sky Glass in the first place, given it has significant scale for its tech platform and development already? According to Reglinski, “A lot of Pay TV operators and telcos face the same challenges we do, and there is an opportunity for global MVPDs [Pay TV operators] to power their entertainment and connectivity services via our platform. We are excited by the chance to bring this [Sky Glass] experience to as many consumers as possible.

“Secondly, platform scale benefits everyone. The more investment we make in our platform the more innovation we can drive, and the more consumers and operators benefit globally.” She says syndication partners find this appealing, given the need to keep ahead of consumers, who are becoming more demanding.

“It is important that this is not a standard technology relationship,” she added. “We are developing true partnerships here, and the [syndication] customers we bring into our system want flexibility, including how they talk to their consumers, and they get quite a lot of control on how that is done.”

Reglinski views the Sky Glass model as a new market opportunity for syndication partners. “We’ve learnt from our own markets that if you launch a proposition that is rooted in true consumer insight and simplicity and you take that to market in a way that talks to consumers, you can break into a new segment and drive customer satisfaction. There are lots of learnings from the Sky and Comcast go-to-market approaches and operators are really interested in us sharing those learnings and helping them to drive their business objectives.

“This is not a point-in-time purchase – you are buying into a roadmap and benefit from all the investments and innovations that we introduce for our own consumers over time. Even in ‘live’ we get unique requests from partners, and we consider those as we develop the platform. And of course, there is live operational support.”

Michelle Reglinski was speaking at Connected TV World Summit.

Subscribers will also have access to mixed martial arts (MMA) content from top competitions, including the Professional Fighters League, MMA Bushido, King of Kings and the Brave Combat Federation.

Alongside a package of elite combat sports, fans can watch women’s football content which includes every game of the UEFA Women’s Champions League and top-flight Spanish women’s football league Primera División Femenina. Subscribing to DAZN 1 HD grants customers access to the entire DAZN service via the DAZN app.

Shay Segev, CEO of DAZN Group, says: “Getting DAZN widely distributed is a priority for us as it delivers our great and growing array of content to more and more fans. We have ambitious, long-term and strategic plans for the UK market. The more people get to know DAZN and what we offer, not just in terms of rights but the full range of digital, interactive and sports entertainment we are developing, the better.”

The service will also offer Showmax Originals and local content from MultiChoice’s proprietary channels including Mzansi Magic, Africa Magic and Maisha Magic.

MultiChoice will relaunch Showmax using NBCUniversal’s Peacock technology platform, and the new Showmax group will be 70% owned by MultiChoice and 30% owned by NBCUniversal. The companies say the move comes as Africa approaches an inflection point in terms of broadband connectivity and affordability, and builds on MultiChoice’s success on the continent, on which it has a 50-market footprint.

Calvo Mawela, Chief Executive Officer of MultiChoice, says: “We launched Showmax as the first African streaming service in 2015 and are extremely proud of its success to date. This agreement represents a great opportunity for our Showmax team to scale even greater heights by working with a leading global player in Comcast and its subsidiaries.”

Matt Strauss, Chairman, Direct-to-Consumer & International, NBCUniversal, comments, “This partnership is an incredible opportunity to further scale the global presence of Peacock’s world-class streaming technology, as well as to introduce millions of new customers to extensive premium content from NBCUniversal and Sky’s stellar entertainment brands.”

Customers can find the app by saying “Open Lionsgate+” into their voice remote, or on Sky Glass using far field voice. Alternatively, they can locate it in the apps rail.

Superna Kalle, President of International Networks at Starz, says: “Partnering with Sky is a key strategy in strengthening Lionsgate+’s presence in Europe and will give even more subscribers access to our massive offering of curated content. We look forward to strengthening our relationship with viewers who share our commitment to delivering audiences exceptional content paired with a premium user experience.”

Under the deal, seven DAZN exclusive Serie A (Italy’s top football league) TIM matches per round will be broadcast on the ZONA DAZN channel (complementary to three broadcasts on Sky channels) – which Sky subscribers will be able to access at a special rate via the Sky decoder. The channel will also include a playlist of in-depth programmes and DAZN Original content.

Sky customers who are not subscribed to the sports streamer can sign up to DAZN Standard or DAZN Plus offers through a dedicated website and add the option to view ZONA DAZN.

Andrea Duilio, CEO of Sky Italy, said: “Sky has always supported the Italian passion for football and love for sport. This agreement with DAZN will provide fans with even more opportunities to enjoy Serie A. In addition to the 3 Serie A matches per round broadcast on Sky channels, the DAZN app will be available on Sky Q, together with all the best content and streaming apps, all in one place.

“The option of linear channels via satellite or digital terrestrial will also be available with the DAZN offer. This is a big step forward for consumers – Serie A can now be enjoyed on more platforms and it will receive greater visibility.”

Stefano Azzi, CEO of DAZN Italy, said: “The diversification of our distribution partnerships in Italy represents both our focus on bringing the best sport to serve all fans, and  is also an important strategic moment in the growth of our business.

“The innovative new commercial agreement with Sky that we are announcing today is one of the most important collaborations signed in view of the 2022/2023 season, with the aim of offering live and on-demand sports content to an ever-increasing number of fans and thus increasing the visibility of the competitions we broadcast. This agreement is also in line with our successful partnership with Sky in Germany.”

The streaming service is also set to rollout in several European markets. As part of a multi-year distribution agreement with Sky, Paramount+ will be available on Sky platforms in Italy, Germany, and Austria later this year. The streamer will also launch in Switzerland this year, and in India in 2023. Last week, Paramount+ launched in South Korea in partnership with Korean content platform, TVING.

The streamer launched with 8000 hours of content from across Paramount’s range of brands and studios, including SHOWTIME®, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures. Subscribers will have access to Paramount+ Original titles such as HALO, 1883, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and The Offer. UK original dramas on the service include A Gentleman in Mosco, Flatshare,The Burning Girls and The Ex-Wife.

The streamer will also offer thousands of hours of kids and family content, with Paramount+ Original series such as Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years and Fairly Odd Parents: Fairly Odder.

Tom Ryan, President & CEO of Streaming at Paramount, said: “This is a phenomenal year of growth for Paramount+. By the end of the year, we expect to be live in 45 countries with our unbeatable content offering, with a diversified set of major distribution partners.

“The UK and Ireland are key strategic markets in the global rollout of Paramount+ given the broad distribution of our brands across the free-to-air and Pay TV landscape. Our partnership with Sky gives us a strong foothold here and in several other markets where we plan to launch Paramount+ this year. Our differentiated strategy means we are poised to keep bringing the most compelling stories to audiences around the world.”

Maria Kyriacou, President, Australia, Canada, Israel and UK, commented: “Our partnership with Sky is a vital part of our launch strategy for Paramount+, giving us an engaged customer base hungry for more premium content. Meanwhile, we continue to reach new fans of Paramount output through a range of direct-to-consumer channels.”

VideoAI was released for general use by Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) in January. It is a fully managed, 24/7 software-as-a-service offering, so media companies can pay for the applications on a per minute basis. According to Bart Spriester, VP & GM of Content & Streaming Providers Suite at CTS, the key differentiating point for VideoAI is the provision of pre-trained algorithms which mean the applications work out-of-the-box. Other vendors provide the AI detectors but leave media owners to work out their own algorithms, he claims. The VideoAI algorithms draw upon millions of hours of AI learning at Sky, Comcast and NBCUniversal.

VideoAI is also fully automated – there is no manual work involved when segmenting show introductions or credits once they have been detected, for example. “AI technology can be focused not only on enhancing the end consumer experience but on reducing the operational cost for content providers and operators,” Spriester points out.

The immediate applications available with VideoAI are:

• The solution can be used to generate specific metadata to support content chaptering with automated titles and summaries, plus smart thumbnails. Intros and credit rolls are detected to support this. VideoAI can also help detect ad breaks to support dynamic ad insertion.
• Contextual advertising. The content is analysed for brand opportunities and for advertiser sensitivities. CTS says this capability improves the value of every ad break.
• Live-to-VOD. Thumbnails, titles and summaries are created on-the-the-fly as a live event airs, ready for fast on-demand availability. Highlight reels can be automatically created during live sports events – and these are shown on-screen to enhance the sports viewing experience.
• QoE checks. Video assets can be automatically analysed to identify and tag key onscreen moments such as hard cuts, black frames and transitions, or audio silences or specific sounds. Alarms can be set to warn operations teams if something is wrong. If there is silence, for example, is there supposed to be silence in the programming or has the stream failed?

Comcast Technology Solutions says content owners, operators and even advertisers can work with the company to develop their own business use-cases. And Spriester promises that even small customers can influence the CTS development roadmap for the new product.

In terms of workflow, the VideoAI detectors sit downstream of audio and video encoding/decoding and closed captions creation. Customers with content in the cloud (and Spriester says this would be most of them) can provide low-resolution proxy assets for the VideoAI detectors to check, prior to the AI-based applications being performed. Enriched metadata is then sent back. It would also be possible to run detectors downstream of full video files, and it is possible to analyse live video as long as CTS can site its detectors in the cloud where the live signal comes from (proxies cannot be used with live).

CTS is in talks with several potential customers outside the Comcast group, with segmentation for auto-chaptering one of the most sought-after applications. Spriester emphasises: “This is not just another AI tool. We are bringing the pre-trained algorithms on a SaaS-based model. Our solutions have been proven and deployed at scale at some of the largest operators and content creators in the world.”

Fraser Stirling, Chief Product Officer at Sky, adds: “VideoAI from Comcast Technology Solutions is a potential game-changer. With VideoAI as a managed service, companies can quickly launch a range of AI-powered video services at scale, and benefit from investments we’ve made internally, to drive their own business objectives forward.”

The solution enables brands to tailor their campaigns around target locations (from country, county, city, down to the postcode level), as well as the demographics and estimated affluence of the household, and change which content is played for the sponsor media depending on who is watching. For example, Sky Media says that “a car brand could change the car model featured depending on the affluence or life-stage of the household, or change the scenery and voice-over depending on location.”

Smart Sponsorships is powered by the same technology as AdSmart, Sky’s addressable TV solution which launched in the UK in 2014 before expanding to European markets three years later. Sky Media says that brands using AdSmart have seen a 48% reduction in tune-away during ads, a 35% increase in engagement and a 10% increase in spontaneous recall.

Dev Sangani, Advertising Capability and Strategy Director at Sky Media, says: “AdSmart pioneered the use of TV addressability and that same technology will help do the same for sponsorships. With rich data, exciting creative possibilities and trusted and engaging content, this latest innovation will help brands create even more effective partnerships with our shows and channels.”

This has several implications for Sky Media, the Sky sales house that represents all Sky channels, third-parties including ViacomCBS and has addressable TV partnerships with the UK’s other biggest sales houses, ITV Media (ITV) and 4Sales (Channel 4). “The first opportunity is that every piece of content on Glass can be addressable,” Patrick Béhar, Chief Business Officer at Sky Media, pointed out at The Future of TV Advertising last month. This is helped by the fact that recordings are stored in the network.

“Suddenly you move from a world where only a portion of the content is targeted to one where everything is targeted advertising,” Béhar continued. That is important because targeted inventory has higher CPMs.”

Sky Glass will enable faster in-flight optimisation of campaigns because the data will be available faster, the Sky executive continued. “That is something our [content and advertising] partners are interested in.”

Shoppable advertising (where consumers can buy brands/products they have seen in shows, directly through the TV) should be easier on this platform, he reckons, and Béhar hailed the brand safety of this Smart TV environment.

Automatic content recognition (ACR), where a television recognises what someone watches through the pixels hitting the glass, is not required, Béhar said, as Sky knows what people are watching through their direct, opted-in, GDPR compliant subscriber relationship.

Sky Glass and its all-digital delivery of television will not influence how much advertising will be sold programmatically or made available for self-serve buying systems, either. Béhar made it clear that these features are platform-independent for Sky.

Sky “is going to push the boundaries of what television advertising does” using Sky Glass, and the company is discussing the possibilities with channel partners like ITV and Channel 4, he told the London conference.

Editor’s Comment

When it comes to advertising, one significant potential change created by Sky Glass is that Sky will gain priority access inside at least some ‘free-to-air’ homes in the same way that other Smart TV makers have. This would probably apply to only a small subset of Sky Glass homes, so the market opportunity depends on how many Sky Glass sets are sold.

As you can read separately, consumers buy the Sky Glass television set outright or using monthly installments across 2-4 years, yet the Sky television subscription is on a month-to-month contract. This presents the possibility that consumers take the TV content/aggregation package with Sky Glass but later unsubscribe, leaving them with a different relationship – where Sky is ‘just’ a television set provider to that home.

Smart TV makers who sell devices but not content, like Samsung, are already curating free-to-view, ad-supported streaming services and offering ad sales for those channels/services. In theory, if a household ends its Sky content/aggregation subscription, Sky could take up a similar role – representing free-to-view content owners that are not sitting behind a Pay TV subscription wall.

There is no suggestion that Sky will pursue this as an opportunity, but when asked if it was of interest, Béhar declined the chance to trash the idea. He simply said: “There is a market for free-to-air [broadcast] plus streamers [as witnessed in most Smart TVs on the market, where these content groups are both presented via the user interface].”

However, approaching CTV media buying in exactly the same way you would with digital formats such as display, could have some detrimental impact affecting access to premium video inventory.

Critical conversations are now happening backstage about the best ways to deal with the convergence of the digital and TV landscapes. In our recent panel session at the Future of TV Advertising Global event we posed the question: CTV is Great, But Can TV (Really) Re-Invent Itself? By exploring the growth of CTV to date and the expectations broadcasters now face, we focused on what needs to happen in the next season of TV’s evolution.

The rising star

There’s no doubt CTV has made a name for itself. US ad spend for CTV grew by almost 60% in 2021 to total $14.4bn, making it something of a blockbuster. Meanwhile in Europe, 84% of marketers who participated in a FreeWheel survey* expected advanced TV spend to rise in 2022, with CTV in particular growing in double-digits in the UK, France, Italy, Spain, and Germany.

Now, the industry needs to prepare for what this growth means, as the rise of CTV will have significant ramifications for all stakeholders. In fact, for the value of premium video inventory to truly shine, some points must be carefully considered:

• The promise of “unique” demand: Many think that simply connecting platforms, selling premium video programmatically, and enabling header bidding will attract new buyers who are keen to purchase TV inventory similarly to digital display. In practice it’s more complicated and requires a collaborative approach between the buy and sell sides. For example, broadcasters that can make additional first-party data available to inform marketing decision-making will boost their appeal to media buyers.
• The call for supply path optimisation (SPO): There has been much discussion around SPO which attempts to minimise the many intermediaries and ensure the most direct access to publisher inventory. This has been a key TV strength, and while SPO might be needed in a complex and nebulous display environment, it hardly does in a premium context. Broadcasters such as Channel 4, ITV, or Sky have built their own advertising platforms and operating their private exchange prevents the dilution of value and ensures that buyers have an almost direct, transparent and optimal access to their inventory. In a sense, the TV industry invented Supply Path Optimization.
• The pot of gold at the rainbow’s end: There is often a view that, if display-like buying (ease of auctioning and high competition) can also be brought to linear TV, then broadcasters, through premium scarcity, stand to profit with CPMs remaining high. While this may look appealing, it goes against basic economic principle, as the fundamental behind programmatic trading need to change to be embraced by the TV industry and one must talk more about standardization than competition.  

   

  How will the narrative progress?

  Central to harnessing digital-like capabilities is data. In an industry that may soon be lacking identifiers (IDs), first-party data holds renewed importance. As Katie Coteman, Vice President, Advertising and Partnerships at Discovery says, “we need to have much more of a direct relationship with our consumers”, following not only the need for privacy-compliant data, but also how audiences are engaging with premium video content across platforms such as CTV, broadcaster video-on-demand, and subscription video-on-demand.

  To navigate a fragmented market, broadcasters require technology that enables data connections while protecting both consumer privacy and the value of first-party data. In the words of Paola Colombo, General Manager at Publitalia ‘80, “defining the rules of the game, the standards for addressable TV” are vital steps for market growth. Alongside standardisation, the ad industry needs a sustainable approach to identity resolution, data sharing, and data usage rights in the TV landscape.

  Against a backdrop of consistently developing user privacy regulations, it will be necessary to create tools and frameworks specifically designed for the future of TV. Broadcasters must ensure they continue to lead the way in building new and effective techniques, as well as trusted relationships. Veriça Djurdjevic, Chief Revenue Officer at Channel 4, shared how the broadcaster’s business strategy encapsulates this approach, through “shifting how we think about ourselves in terms of ‘pivoting to digital’, to ‘[prioritising] digital growth ahead of linear ratings’.”

  Although CTV has accelerated the evolution of the TV landscape, it is so much more than just a digital screen. It shares the premium quality, high engagement levels, and immersive content of TV, making it a standout performer when combined with its strong potential for data-driven capabilities. By building solutions that enable the use of data at scale, retaining ownership of their assets, and generating value for both buyers and sellers, the ad industry stakeholders can transform the premium video ecosystem and ensure that TV and CTV work in symbiosis.

  * ​The study was conducted between 23 July and 2 August 2021 with 577 marketers surveyed (comprising primarily of advertisers and agencies) in key European markets:  Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the UK, in collaboration with independent research company CoLab Media. Details available here.