TV OF TOMORROW 2012 - ISSUES IN FOCUS

The [itvt] editorial team develops the agenda for our TV of Tomorrow Show events through an extensive and elaborate dialoguing process with key industry players, that is designed to ensure that each show covers all the issues that are currently of most pressing relevance to the industry. As a result, we typically announce the agenda just a few weeks before each show. However, some of the issues that we expect to explore at TVOT 2012 include:

• Reports from the field: How recent deployments of tcommerce, interactive TV advertising, dynamic and addressable VOD advertising, social TV, connected-TV applications, live streaming of multichannel pay-TV services within the home, TV placeshifting, and other advanced TV technologies are faring in the real world; and what the success or otherwise of these deployments tells us about the business models for the TV of tomorrow. Which interactive platforms and services are attracting audiences and generating revenues today and how?
• The second screen: pay-TV operators', broadcasters' and advertisers' embrace of the iPad and other companion devices, and the potential impact of this phenomenon on the user experience, the programming formats and the business models of television.
• The emergence of Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology as an enabler of broadcast-synchronized interactive TV advertising and programming enhancements, both on second-screen devices and connected-TV sets; and the implications of this emergence for established interactive TV technologies and business models.
• Recent and pending developments in interactive and advanced TV standards and initiatives, such as EBIF, tru2way, Canoe, UltraViolet, Ad-ID, EIDR, SCTE-130, HTML5 and more; and how these standards need to evolve going forward.
• The implications for the cable industry of operators' embrace of such phenomena as connected TV ("the cable app"), live streaming, and TV placeshifting.
• The emergence and implications of connected-TV advertising and commerce.
• The emergence and implications of social-TV advertising and commerce.
• How tcommerce-enabled commercials could change the economics of television.
• What the TV industry can learn from interactive online video advertising; and whether traditional TV ad campaigns are more effective when complemented by interactive online video.
• The extent to which the "cord-cutting" phenomenon presents an existential threat to the pay-TV industry; and the extent to which new developments in pay-TV, such as dynamic VOD ad insertion, TV Everywhere, and the incorporation of TV placeshifting technology into set-top boxes, will help operators defend against any threat posed by cord-cutting.
• The future of TV design: How to ensure that usability and high-quality design become a core element of the interactive TV user experience, and not just an afterthought; strategies for designing consistent, cross-screen and cross-platform interactive video experiences; making the business case for good design; and more.
• How gestural- and voice-control technologies and touchscreen interfaces could reinvent the user experience of television. Should interface designers begin to think of television as a "felt" (as well as a viewed) experience?
• The reinvention of television as a personalized and portable experience.
• How the emergence of connected TV is enabling newspapers, video-sharing services, independent film distributors and other new players to become programmers, and the implications of this phenomenon for the traditional TV content business.
• Understanding international ITV markets: advanced TV opportunities in Europe and beyond.
• The emergence of video-powered social TV, that employs such services as Skype and Google+ Hangouts, and its potential impact on the evolution of programming formats.
• The emergence of brands (e.g. Chevrolet and Coca-Cola) as providers of second-screen interactive/social-TV experiences in their own right, and the implications of this phenomenon for the nascent second-screen ITV industry
• Envisioning the next-generation cable set-top box, and defining its role in an increasingly "boxless" TV ecosystem.
• The new forms of data that are being generated by interactive and social TV, and how brands and agencies can take advantage of them to make their campaigns more targeted, more accountable and thus more effective.
• Sports, Social TV and the Second Screen.
• Connected-TV app stores, over-the-top delivery of live and on-demand programming, the "open cable API," "cable-as-an-app," and more: the rapidly evolving inter-relationships between the pay-TV, consumer electronics and programming/content industries.
• The impact of new interactive broadband video technologies (hotspotting, overlays, image tracking, etc.) on the interactive TV space.
• How interactive technologies are giving rise to new forms of cross-platform storytelling and new narrative genres.
• Hybrid TV and its significance for pay-TV operators.
• The ways in which Facebook and Twitter have become key players in the TV space; the relationship between these services and smaller, dedicated social-TV platforms; and what broadcasters, advertisers and pay-TV operators need to understand about the social-TV phenomenon and its potential to change the nature of programming and the economics of television.
• The continued importance of gaming to the interactive TV industry, and the convergence of gaming and social TV.
• The latest tools for creating, delivering and testing interactive and multiplatform television.
• Outreach and evangelism: How to drive consumer awareness and adoption of interactive TV. How well do we understand what motivates the interactive consumer?
• How interactive and social TV will impact local broadcasters and advertisers.
• The "IP-ification" of cable television.
• The impact of video streaming on the Internet infrastructure; the significance of such issues as Net Neutrality and bandwidth caps for the broadband video industry; and emerging technologies for enabling high-quality streaming in low-bandwidth environments.
• The practicalities of interactive content development, deployment, and tracking.
• Emerging paradigms for content discovery and navigation.