First on Lost Remote: Last night at the Social TV Summit press and VIP event Jesse Redniss, the VP of Digital for USA Network shared a sneak peak of their new second screen app that will be powered by yap.tv. The app isn’t live yet but will be coming soon. Based on his presentation and some direct testing of the app itself, it appears that yap.tv’s beautiful display, live chat, polls, pics, vids, and social chatter streaming are translating well in their branded “USA Anywhere” version of the app.
Why yap.tv?
When Redniss was asked why they decided to work with yap.tv and how they evaluate working with partners, he stressed with a smile that they really believe all “characters” are welcome. He explained that they don’t want to work with partners who are just asking for ways to take their brands and put it on a platform. With yap.tv, while it will be it’s own app, it clearly states “powered by yap.tv” and has the same functionality as yap.tv’s main app.
This kind of partnership is smart for both sides. Yap.tv will continue to get exposure and potentially attract other networks to white label their platform, and for USA Network, they’ll still have yap.tv’s growing community within their main app to tap into. The same reason we don’t use different TVs to access different networks, coming years may prove that consumers don’t want to open separate apps for separate networks. Either way, USA will be able to leverage the yaps.
Integrating with advertisers:
Redniss showed how powerful the app will be for the network’s advertisers. Hyundai, which you can see above, receives a square in the main screen of the app, that’s the same size, look and feel as a TV square. When you tap Hyundai’s square you’re also taken to a screen that’s the same as a show gets. Polls, a live chat, a stream of tweets and more.
This is powerful because it’s a great example of bringing the advertiser into an equally engaging experience that you’re giving a show. It’s also not disrupting the show content at all. It’s going to be interesting to see how many consumers access their advertiser’s content if they’ll create incentives to tap on it.