1. The OS Wars Heat Up

The ongoing TV OS wars are far and away the most important thing happening in TV right now, and a new skirmish appears to be flaring up as Xperi, current steward of the TiVo brand, is launching a new offensive against Roku and Amazon in an attempt to lure OEMs into the TiVoverse.

TiVo is hoping to take advantage of Roku’s announcement that they are rolling out their own Roku-branded TVs to convince OEMs to make the switch. The company recently (July 2022) purchased Viewd (fka Opera TV) to help it step up its TVOS game and has been touting its position as an independent operating system.

Which is why, during the company's Q4 earnings call, CEO Jon Kirschner announced that he fully expected the TiVo OS to power 7 million smart TVs by 2026.

Game on!

Why It Matters

Those of you under 40 may not be aware that there was a point in time when “TiVo” was a verb, as in “I’m just going to TiVo it.” TiVo was the OG DVR (or at least the only one to get traction) and its recommendation-based interface was decades ahead of its time.

Through a series of boneheaded miscalculations (lifetime subscriptions!) which I won’t go into because they could fill a book, TiVo lost its control of that market as well as the English language, and future generations will now “DVR” shows. (Provided DVR is even a thing.)

But TiVo never really faded away and as ownership passed from Rovi to Xperi, a hardcore group of fans helped keep the flame burning.

Which brings us to the present day when it is seeking to rectify one of the many early mistakes it made by not licensing its OS to various OEMs.

One noteworthy deal TiVo has struck is with a Turkish TV OEM called Vestel. 

Here’s why: While it is easy to view the OS Wars as a battle between two sets of well-known global behemoths—Amazon and Google (Team Internet) vs Samsung and LG (Team Consumer Electronics)—there are many local manufacturers out there who are looking for an independent OS.

That’s why TiVo’s real competition will come from white label TVOS companies like Foxxum, which are best able to build solutions that work for these smaller OEMs and the markets they serve. (My colleague Evan Shapiro estimates that these smaller OEMs constitute around 40 percent of the global market.)

So there’s that and it’s not nothing.

One final reminder: there are multiple reasons the TVOS wars are so hot. Whoever controls the OS controls what content goes on the TV: which apps, what order they appear in, how they’re recommended to viewers, which ones are pre-installed. They also get to create revenue for themselves by selling ad space on the home screen to programmers that want to promote their own shows and/or apps.

While the US market is pretty tied up, the rest of the world is still wide open. Given that the goal of most major US media companies remains Total World Domination, that global market is very, very important.

What You Need To Do About It

If you have not been paying attention to the TVOS wars, consider this a wake up call. It’s the one area where things are still very much up in the air, it’s a global war and it’s going to be a big deal.

If you are a local OEM (e.g. not a big global manufacturer) then one of these independent/white label operating systems is probably your best move. They can help you to showcase local content providers and to create an interface specifically designed for the markets you operate in.

If you are TiVo, now is the time to repay all those fans for 24 years of loyalty by delivering something extraordinary.

And no more lifetime subscriptions.

2. Big Brands Don’t Necessarily Want Granular CTV Targeting

I was at the Beet Retreat earlier this month and was heartened to hear more than a few speakers make reference to something we learned when doing our recent report on advertising on the FASTs, something that often gets underplayed in the rush to figure out CTV: big brands don’t always want or need digital style targeting.

They view their audience as pretty much everyone on earth and if they hit people who are not in their primary target, it’s not the end of the world. Maybe that person will affirm someone else’s purchase, maybe they’ll buy one as a gift, maybe they’ll be part of the target 20 years from now. Regardless, for these brands, it’s not worth spending the money on higher CPMs.

The other factor is that these brands regard TV as a reach vehicle for their image advertising. Their goal is not to get someone to actually buy something then and there, but rather, to think good thoughts about the brand. So the more people they can reach with their advertising, the better.

All of which is actually good news for streaming TV.

Why It Matters

What streaming really needs now is for TV’s big spenders to commit significant shares of their budgets to CTV. That’s far more likely to happen if they’re going for broad reach than for specific target demos based on the sort of first party data many of them just don’t have.

So getting them to see CTV as just “TV” is going to be key and the sense is that it is starting to happen.

The hypothesis is that once the big SVOD services like Netflix, Disney and HBO get their ad-supported tiers up and running and reaching tens of millions of people, that brands will see them as the new Prime Time, while the FASTs will assume the role of cable—a way to reach all those consumers they’re missing and to connect with unique audiences as well. (Hence the name of our report series, FASTs Are The New Cable.)

It’s why we’re also feeling good about contextual advertising, which (a) doesn’t require any first party data and (b) lets brands select fairly broad ranging audiences. It’s also why we’re also getting good vibes about dynamic creative versioning, as it allows brands to take advantage of streaming’s superior tech and append, say, unique geotargeted calls to action to their main brand messages without having to shoot dozens of new commercials.

Which is not to say that data-driven targeting does not have a place in this new world (it does, especially for D2C brands) or that it’s an either/or proposition. Brands can easily choose the broad targeting of contextual and layer in a range of data-driven parameters.

Which is really the advantage of advertising on streaming—it gives brands a whole lot more flexibility along with the emotional connecton of (you guessed it) sight, sound and motion.

What You Need To Do About It

If you’re a big brand, know that you are not alone if you’re thinking that your audience is something along the lines of “anyone with a face” and that if you wanted to hypertarget consumers with specific creative executions, you’d run display ads on digital. TV will still be big and broad, even on streaming. (And if you need to target, say for a promotion or new product, you can do that too.)

If you’re an agency, you’ve heard this before, but it’s time to get your digital and TV people on the same page so that they can more effectively operate in this very hybrid universe.

If you’re a consumer, this is good news because it means TV is not going to feel as creepily hyper targeted as the internet.