Since we created Plinkers, our ambition was to install a new source of revenues for video producers and distributors responding a simple need : “What are the objects i can see in the video i am watching currently”

We all wondered at least once what’s wearing our TV Series heros or more generally what are the products we can see in our favorite videos. This need has been estimated to 42% for 12/18 years old and 30% of the rest of the population (YouGov Study in Septembre 2011).

According to YouTube, four in 10 shoppers visited a store in person or online as a direct result of watching a video. In addition, 34% of apparel shoppers said they were more likely to make a purchase after viewing an online video.

For 4 years, we have been searching the good tools, the good partnerships, the good sources, the good user interfaces etc. to answer this clear need. Consequently and before launching in 2nd screen market we have been able to test, try and experience many way to answer that need. One of them was the “Interactive Overlay” used in that YouTube operation.

Our conclusion is the following : To make a single shot operation is quite easy. However, our goals were very much more ambitious. We aim at getting that tool/usage ultimately scalable And here comes the real problems :
- Technical problems,
- Obsolescence of the products,
- Sourcing the details,
- Business models,
- Rights & Law stuffs
and many others

We are very glad to see that YouTube still steps further that way as we are ready for it as you can judge in that sample we have made 4 years ago on a Ikea music clip inside a YouTube player. So if some of you would like to go deeper in the question, we will be glad to help.

The user experience that we are using here is the one we consider as the best for the following reasons :
1-It doesn’t break the video experience to roughly
2-It displays some quite discreet and non intrusive links which doesn’t disturb the quality of the creation
3-It offers a quite intuitive, simple interface matching to each size and format of player
4-it allows the branding of the UI
5-It uses a dynamic content very much more adapted to internationale operation (Language, Price, Range of products…).

Of course, what you can see here, is the emerged part of the iceberg as the immerged one is our back office fully dedicated to this practice.

So to those who consider the YouTube videos as a real source of trafic in-store (off or online) we invite you to contact us to go further. However, we inform you that we are also preparing another way to answer this need which could really disrupt our uses and modify for a long while the way we think about it.

The real question about that is : “After the Wahou effect, do you think it’s gadget or really useful ?” Futur will tell us !

Here is the video of their keynote at the CES.

So here are the feedback on several operation that we judged as interesting…

Surfing the strong “gamification” wave but also the evolution of the place that take smartphones in the everyday life of their target. They decided to revisit their historical “Under The Cap” operation on a 2nd Screen mode (Inspired, to be honest, by what Pepsi Cola investigates in 2011 with Into_Now operation). This operation, launched in Hong-Kong has been called : Coca Cola “Chok” app.

This brand new operation completely matching with some kind of innovation that we are currently proposing to some of our clients and we consider it as a good benchmark. Coca-Cola presents in that video some interesting statistics we wanted to share you. So, to all our current clients/contacts, we hope you’ll enjoy that video and will keep in mind that the success of such an isolated compain for Coca Cola, could be very much boosted on a more “mutualised” one (inside a single and same application)…

Interactive TVC _ Coca Cola from PasdeBrasPasdeChocolat on Vimeo.

The Copy for the launching :

“CHOK” – Coca-Cola from mo-c on Vimeo.

The aim of Plinkers is to offer to many other app developers the opportuntiy to propose such kind of services easily !

Goab

BeyondTV

Zeebox

Into_now

Nintendo Wii U

Ebay

Honda Jazz

Heineken

Disney

and to go further in the prospective of the intercommunication of screens and things…

Source : http://mashable.com/2011/11/14/social-tv-media-summit-video/#33369Teaching-%E2%80%93-and-Learning-From-%E2%80%93-The-Old-Grey-Lady

Most of people agrees about Facebook as a major and highly valuable company. And this is despite a quite low income level compared to its big use and huge database. Consequently, most of those people wonder the way Facebook will succeed to transform that big potential into really big money. To me the latest announces from Zuckerberg represent the backbone strategy to transforms Facebook into a really profitable company.

At the begining was “facebook connect” then upgraded and called “Open Graph”

Let’s rewind a bit. Some months ago Facebook announces the launch of “Facebook connect“, an API allowing people to log in outside facebook websites. Quite practical but not really profitable invention until a while later when the young CEO announced the switch from “facebook connect” to “Open Graph”. We intuitively understand that new version of the API is a part of a huge datamining process to more and more learn and unerstand about you.

Then we had “Facebook Places”

Some while after, following to the quite noticeable growth of Foursquare, Facebook announces its counter-attack launching “Facebook Places”. That “geotargeting” service feeds now facebook datas with more real life datas about you.

And now comes “Facebook Deals”!

Now things are becoming really concrete. Introducing Facebook deals on the original ideas of GroupOn. With that new service, Facebook is federating around itself many special offers dealing with thousands different types of products (food, culture, clothes, trips…)

So why that evolution is so interesting ?

With that latest launch Facebook switches from funny “Social Marketing” to efficient & profitable “Opportunity marketing”. We could also call it “Contextual Marketing” as the idea is to provide a specific & stimulating offer to a specific person and match to a specific context. The idea is of course to generate a spontaneous & emotional purchase !

So, armed of that range of tools, Facebook is now able to associate the following issues at the mean time :

• Right Place
• Right Moment
• Right Person
• Right Offer

If you associate that revolution to the uprising “App” hegemony you quickly understand that Facebook will soon become your permanent shopping guide. The ultimate personal shopper who will be able to listen, to understand and to follow you to be able to whisper to your ear the next bargains you should catch-up at the exact moment you need or can do it.

So what role takes Plinkers in “opportunity marketing” ?

It’s quite simple !

• Open Graph gets the dtas about you, what you like what you don’t and influences you.
  
• Foursquare / Facebook places get the information about where you like to go or live, what kind of shops you regularly visit, what tv program you are regularly watching etc.
• Plinkers is one step ahead getting you to tell us what are the products you like or would like.

Then the advantages are obvious ! First you easily adapt the special offers to provide to each user. And second, you can also provide them at the paroxism of their desire which is the moment they watch their heros using/wearing it !

Of course in a very near future it will feed some iPhone’s App to generate some alerts about products they would have added as favourites at the exact moment they are walking by a shop selling that product…

1. Create some product/brand awarness
2. Create a more engaging experience with the brand
3. Create direct ROI on products
4. Create ads less intrusive and more entertaining

That marketing solution can be applied for brand content, branded content, and of course video monetization! By the way we organised Plinkers around those two different business models. Call us to get more details about that.
However, we have a “bemol” dealing with the current Ikea campain which has been committed to YouTube generic tools. Using those “not made for” dialog bubbles have been quite restrictive and offering a quite bad User Interface Experience.

• You don’t really well find the links you can click on,
• you have to catch the zone to click while the video is playing,
• you can’t put as many tag as you want as the bubble size has to be huge,
• the design is quite “rough”
• you are driven to another YouTube video instead of being redirected directly to the eshop.

In order to explain how we think that it could have been done with a more friendly and intuitive U.I we decided to remake that video integrating the Plinkers solution. We hope that Ikea will like that kind job we did for them.

By the way we integrated very much more hotspots, fixed some content mistakes and integrated a multi-country solution. By default your IP address is recognized and we display to you the content that matches to your country (UK, US, ES, NL, IT, GR, FR). But you fancy to try it, you can switch to another country using the Plinkers logo menu. Of course all the content is now “dynamic” and picked up from the Ikea eshops. That way are able to tell you when the product is “out of stock”

We also integrated a “Facebook sharing function” and an “embed code” to spread it through blogs. By the way, it’s important to notice that the embed code offer you the possibility to embed the video player like usually but it also offers you the option to embed the video at this exact moment and with the bubble of that product already opened. This function is quite interesting if, for example, Ikea wants to show that product “in-situ” in that video.
Of course we have a whole additional palette of functions we could have integrated there but we wanted to keep some of them still secret to preserve some surprise for the future…

Here is the Ikea / YouTube version

Here is the Ikea / Plinkers / YouTube version … click pause to get more ! Enjoy it and do not hesitate to comment !

l’OS proposera également un site web qui permettra d’ajouter des applications directement sur son mobile sans même y toucher. Un outil qui semble bien plus souple que l’utilisation systématique d’iTunes pour l’iPhone.

Enfin, un élément important pour les opérateurs mais aussi et surtout pour nous utilisateurs. Un outil permettra de connecter son mobile a son ordinateur en wifi pour accéder à sa connexion internet…

Ci-joint la vidéo de démo…

Pour les développeurs, le kit de développement est dores et déjà disponible même si cette version les Google TV ne seront disponibles apparemment qu’à partir de cet automne…

Source : http://ecrans.fr/Google-connecte-les-petits-ecrans,9960.html