ACM TVX Asia Forum

ACM TVX Asia Forum is to form an Asian community in the ACM TVX community. It is a pre-event for the main ACM TVX conference, initiated by the General Chairs of ACM TVX 2018 (Seoul, South Korea).

The purpose of this initiative is to significantly increase the number of attendees coming from Asia to the ACM TVX conference, by forming a strong local community around the topic of interactive experiences for TV and online media. We believe that the most effective strategy to achieve this goal is to attract professionals from that region by inviting them to participate in the conference.

This forum  supported by ACM SIGCHI follows a general workshop format that invites keynote speakers who share the topics extremely relevant in Asia (e.g., manufacturing, entertainment), and other attendees are able to understand what would be the primary issues to address the Asian online/media markets.

Forum Format

The format of the Forum is highly interactive, intended to form a community of academics and practitioners interested in the current status of online video and television in Asia. Several keynotes, representing different views (TV manufacturing industry, Content business, digital marketing, user experience), will be invited. Each of them will have around half an hour to introduce the state of the art, and their perspectives. One of the Forum fellows, acting as host, will then have ten minutes of response time, opening the floor then to the Forum participants for general discussion. The intention is to create a process of sustained knowledge exchange and interaction.

Participation

The ACM TVX ASIA Forum welcomes all international delegates, especially, Smart TV practitioners, new platforms and online content developers, digital marketers, and UI/UX researchers (not restricted to only Asian delegates) who are interested in entering into the Asian market.

Theme 2017:

A Brand New Game of Online Digital Marketing in Asia

Backgrounds

BMW advertised on WeChat, a popular messaging app in China, with around 550m monthly users in 2015. But its ads were shown only to those whose profiles suggested they were potential buyers of expensive cars. Others were shown ads for more affordable stuff, such as smartphones. The campaign made some angry, because those not shown the BMW ad  referred themselves as diao, or (putting it politely) losers [Extended from The Economist 08/29/2015].

The carmaker’s experience shows the creativity of digital online advertising today, but at the same time, an example of how marketing is struggling to find the right way to reach consumers on new digital platforms, where they are spending ever more of their time. Advertisers like social-media platforms because they gather all sorts of data on each user’s age, consumption patterns, interests and so on. This means ads can be aimed at them with an accuracy that is unthinkable with analogue media. For example, Chevrolet, an American car brand, has sent ads to the Facebook pages and Twitter feeds of people who had expressed an interest in, or signed up to test-drive, a competitor’s vehicle. Such fine-tuned targeting means that the distinction between advertising and e-commerce is becoming blurred. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms are selling ads containing “buy now” buttons, which let users complete a sale on the spot. It is too early to tell how many consumers want such a convenience, but the social platforms foresee a future in which they get paid by advertisers to provide instant-shopping services that make the platforms more useful to their members, and get them to spend more time on them.

Some TV media have to feel much pain from the loss of ad revenue to digital rivals. As TV audiences both decline and shift to services that do not have ads, such as Netflix, the competition will be more chronically felt. However, social networks, and TV advertisers interested in switching to them, have yet to work out what is the optimal format for video ads.

To wring the most out of the ability to target consumers precisely on social media, ad agencies are making big changes to their campaigns. Instead of creating a single, broad-brush message that will run across television, radio, print and outdoor, they are producing many variations on a theme, matching each to the subset of consumers they judge most likely to respond to it.  However, doing with personalisation on social media costs a lot so we cannot target too much. Hence, some researchers look for how to define “online personalities”, which has not been successful.

Even if marketers master social media without coming across as clumsy, grating or intrusive, there will surely be a limit to how much advertising will shift to the platforms. Television ads are still great for reaching big audiences with simple messages.

This forum will discuss the potential topics (but not subject to only):

  • Digital online marketing in Asia markets
  • Digital consumers in Asia (or global)
  • Online personalities
  • Production-cost tradeoff
  • Business models in digital marketing
  • Social media and marketing (target marking possibility?)
  • Algorithms to specify target audiences
  • Attraction and aestehtics in digital online media (artistic experience and digital marketing)

Forum Organizers

  • Hokyoung Ryu is a Professor in Department of Arts & Technology at Hanyang University (Email: hryu@hanyang.ac.kr)
  • Jieun Kim is an Assistant Professor in Department of Technology Management at Hanayng University (Email: jkim2@hanyang.ac.kr)
  • Donghun Chung is a Professor in School in Communications at Kwangwun University (Email: donghunc@gmail.com)
  • Shuichi Aoki is a resercher at NHK Japan (Email: aoki.s-ha@nhk.or.jp)

Sponsors

  • ACM SIGCHI Development Funds
  • ACM TVX Steering Committee
  • ACM TVX 2017 Organising Committee
  • Department of Arts & Technology, Hanyang University

Theme 2016:

Can television compete with other emerging platforms in Asia?

The Asian consumer revolution is here. The conventional media consumption based on television watching (notably, one-way and push-service) is diminishing, leaving space for more interactive and cherry-picking consumption based on mobile phones and computers. Given the importance of television manufacturing in Asia, key players (e.g., LG, Samsung, Sony, Xiaomi, etc.) are providing improved solutions based on bigger and better resolution, and Internet-able television sets or smart TVs. As the Internet became part of the mainstream media, many have questioned if this online medium has to power to cannibalize the traditional TV world.

A ZenithOptimedia report well represents this cannibalistic effect the Internet might have on television – and the possibility that the Internet would eventually replace television. “The average amount of time people will spend consuming online video each day will increase by 23.3% in 2015 and by a further 19.8% in 2016. In particular, this growth in video consumption is being driven by the rapid rise of smartphone and tablet penetration across the globe, together with the resulting changes in consumer behavior. Video consumption on mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablets) is forecast to grow by 43.9% in 2015 and 34.8% in 2016. ZenithOptimedia (July, 2015) ”

In Asia, the migration of video content to the mobile-based Internet service has been significant in the last five years, when, particular for the younger generation, online video platforms seem to have actually entered into a game-changing stage. This definitely calls for the focus of the Internet’s cannibalistic effect on television, if the conventional television-dependent business value chain does not take an initiative. Witnessing such surging popularity of new online video platforms, many television executives are pondering the best way to respond to the phenomenon.

Little is known about the underlying and dynamic relationship between television and online video from the consumer perspective. Television manufacturers (e.g., LG, Sony, Samsung, Xiaomi, etc), on the one hand, develop a similar platform to watch online video on their own TV set; on the other hand, try to provide new functions that the Internet or mobile phones cannot have, emphasizing that their new TV set could be functionally superior, functionally more desirable than the mobile phones. This is tentatively called, multi-functional ‘Smart TV’ equipped with Internet-able functions, online video contents, games, and even video-calls (e.g., Skype); however, many Asian TV companies are in doubt of smart TV’s substitutability for mobile phones. Therefore, this forum is not designed simply to examine whether or not smart TV can become a substitute for mobile phones or computers. Rather, it attempts to identify the specific underlying motivations for watching video content that increase or decrease the degree to which consumers perceive substitutability between new online video platforms and television.

This forum wishes to discuss i) issues and opportunities in the Asian online video market; ii) how Internet-able TV can compete with other easy-to-use platforms such as mobile phones and computers, and finally, iii) what business models would then best serve for TV manufacturers and online video content providers (e.g., Tencent in China, Naver in Korea etc.)

Forum Organizers

  • Hokyoung Ryu is a Professor in Department of Arts & Technology at Hanyang University (Email: hryu@hanyang.ac.kr)
  • Santosh Basapur works at IIT Institute of Design, and the general chair of ACM TVX2016

Sponsors

  • ACM SIGCHI Development Funds
  • ACM TVX Steering Committee
  • ACM TVX 2016 Organising Committee
  • Department of Arts & Technology, Hanyang University