Rich Media Formats

Non-linear, clickable multimedia content

How to address changing usage behavior, new devices and more...

The need for new media formats

IP based media services, such as IPTV, are different from conventional TV technology. Via IPTV, television content will be viewed and delivered through technologies used for computer networks. This opens to a wide range of new media services and asks for innovative advertisement and content patterns to satisfy the ever increasing demand of the advertisement industry as well as content production for predefined interfaces to place product related information and advertisements in close vicinity to particular objects within the video.

Advertisements in the form of pre-rolls, post-rolls and overlays are becoming increasingly ineffective as more and more consumers decide to skip these commercials due to the unimportance of the offered information and low individual involvement and interest in the offered product. This fact is boosted by the already addressed technological and economic evolutions in digital TV and media business areas. There is a strong need for new marketing strategies, innovative advertisement and finally a need for new kinds of interactive video content to fit these requirements.

Fraunhofer FOKUS’ offer

With the profound knowledge of IP based media services and the wide experience of IPTV and telecommunication in converged service environments, FOKUS has recently started to relocate this new field of research. A first proof of concept demonstrator at FOKUS shows user-initiated content interaction and interactive advertisement as one part of our development work on rich media formats and content concepts for the converged media landscape.

Rich Media content interaction

Brief description

User-initiated content interaction refers to the following set of features:

• The raw video is enriched by metadata
• Users can initiate a content interaction session at any time
• Prepared objects will be highlighted for interaction
• Consumers can select several objects to get further information (dive into the content)

The additional information, which is displayed once a highlighted object is selected, provides an added value to the user. In this way, he is capable of getting a description of the highlighted object as well as links to related content of any type. Navigating the hyperlinked content spawns a hierarchical object tree, which represents the user’s particular interests at a given moment in time. In contrast to traditional content, which has been produced for linear and non-interactive TV, the user is free to choose what content he wants to consume now and what will be next – the user goes interactive.

Architecture and Workflow

In a first step, the raw video-content has to be analyzed and annotated. This results in an identification and description of the objects in the scenes (e.g. a car, watch, jacket, landscape). The outcome of this procedure is metadata information describing the video content. Advertisers and content producers can place product related information and interactivity by annotating the predefined objects.

After completion of the annotation and aggreation step, the raw video content is enriched with interactive items for user interaction. If the user initiates a pause while watching the video, the rich media player highlights all objects within the current scene, which have been pre-annotated for user interaction. The user is now skilled to interact directly with the interactive items. Based on the given metadata information, various possibilities are conceivable – e.g. link to product portals, direct shopping, product related add-on information and non-linear video scene navigation.


Rich Media content creation

Outcome and relevance

Rich media formats, as described above have the potential to meet the demands of future digital TV and media markets. This will be lead in a win-win situation for both consumers and advertisers:

• Consumers enjoy full control of when and how they receive personalized and interactive information including object descriptions, related links and non-intrusive advertisements.
• Advertisers, content producers and providers enjoy a directly measurable consumer involvement and a higher interest in the offered products and increasing their ROI.

Fostered by the innovative technology und simultaneously upcoming opportunities, manufacturers and CE-Industry will be empowered to open up new markets. Interactive media services become reality and will boost the user experience to a higher level. FOKUS gives advice in technology, standardization and service enhancements to all players in the value chain of converged digital media services, as broadcasters, content and service providers.