Month: April 2017

Amazon Fire Stick: Don’t Risk Sticking Your Business

Technology is Changing TV

Amazon Fire Stick, Chromecast, and Smart TVs are steadily emerging over the horizon, more so now than ever. With access to services like Netflix, Hulu, or HBO Go and devices that allow you to stream those services on your TV, cable is on its way out.

TV has come a long way since the 1920’s, and as we get closer to 2020, looking back on the history of television during the last one hundred years and seeing how far we’ve come is pretty amazing. Today, televisions are just about everywhere you go. Everywhere. And they have been for a while. That’s because TVs are a staple of technology – we use them to reach out to one another, stay informed, and keep ourselves entertained.

If you’re a business owner who caters to crowds, or often has people waiting or sitting for lengthy periods of time, then chances are you’ve got a TV within sight for the exact reasons just listed above. Which is great, the comfort of your customers is key – but in this rapidly advancing world of technology, it’s easy to get carried away when trying to build an inviting waiting room experience.

Between all the technology available to business owners coupled with the drive to maintain customer satisfaction, the ease of putting something up like Netflix powered by an Amazon Fire Stick is second nature. So why wouldn’t you do it? The answer is simple. Because it’s illegal.

NETFLIX TERMS:

The Netflix service and any content viewed through our service are for your personal and non-commercial use only. During your Netflix membership, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, license to access the Netflix service and view Netflix content through the service. Except for the foregoing limited license, no right, title or interest shall be transferred to you. You agree not to use the service for public performances.

Using those services with a “set it and forget it” mentality without regard for the licensing terms and conditions can be dangerous for your business. The people who enforce the rules on media licenses take this very seriously. For more information regarding why you should think twice about setting up services like that in your business, check out this article on using Netflix in your business.

Personal Use is Different than Business Use

In the end, the licensing rights tied with those services only applies to personal use. Setting them up in your business is a no-go. But if you think about it, TVs and plug-ins like Fire Stick and Chromecast were designed with the home setting in mind, not business settings anyway.

fire

So you can’t use a Fire Stick in Your business to deliver any real TV content. Up until recently, this left you with only one real choice: cable TV. And while it’s legal to run cable in a business setting, cable TV isn’t designed for the benefit of your customers and your business. It’s Relevant TV is.

Custom TV from It’s Relevant

It’s Relevant TV bridges the gaps between TV, customer satisfaction, and business messaging using unique digital sinage software – creating a more inviting place for visitors. The service provides businesses with content and control that makes for an all around better TV experience. IRTV creates a custom TV network for each business with access to a vast library of original content divided into a number of categories you can pick and choose from. On top of the TV content with more meaningful controls, your business also gets room to advertise additional services, reach out to customers, and share your latest social media posts. It’s Relevant TV turns your television into a tool for your business.

YouTube Advertisements Result in Bad Brand Exposure

 

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Why are name brands like AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Starbucks, Verizon, and Walmart running away from YouTube? This isn’t a joke with a rhetorical answer like “to get to the other side,” it’s a serious question. These brands, and more, have recently pulled their advertising dollars from the world’s largest online video platform.

YouTube. That endless sea of news, music videos, TV clips, and shameless original content you’ve come to know and love. If you’ve watched anything on YouTube in the last 10 years, then chances are you’ve been slapped with that scrolling yellow bar signifying how long you have until you can actually watch your video. You can thank advertisers for the wait.

If you’ve got a product you’re looking to advertise, it only makes sense to put it where people are going to see it. People at home watch the TV, so you’ve got television ads. People spend a long time driving on the highway, so you see big billboards and hear ads on the radio. And then you have people spending countless hours online – so of course you can put it there. A no-brainer, right? What could possibly go wrong? A lot in fact, as we’ve seen in the news over the past week.

What happens when that ad of yours winds up in front of a video you didn’t expect? Normally, you might pick and choose which videos you want your ad to run on because you’re trying to reach out to the sorts of people who watch that content and might be interested in what you’re selling. But the marvel that technology and “interest targeting” have created just might throw you a curve ball.

YouTube Ads put your brand’s image at risk.

There’s a lot of content out there. A lot. Too much for any one person to sit down and meticulously sift through, especially when a computer can do it for you based on data that’s been collected. Youtube is a prime example of a company that relies upon technology to sort through the 400 hours of video uploaded to it every minute. But no human being is actually watching all of the videos for quality control. That’s when this happens:

“…T-Mobile ads on videos about abortion, Minecraft banners on videos about snorting cocaine and pre-roll ads for Novartis heart medication running on clips titled “Feminism is cancer…”

That was an excerpt taken from an article posted on The Guardian regarding the recent rise in advertisements being pulled off YouTube – having taken them no longer than fifteen minutes of browsing videos to find what they did. And if you’re an advertiser, you likely see the big problem here.

Who could have foreseen your ad for a new car being featured on a video too explicit for me to mention without losing my job. Or your ad for a new seasonal sandwich deal being played before a video featuring the 10 Most Disgusting Foods People Eat. You get the idea. You didn’t intend on your ad being associated with the lewd or otherwise unfavorable content it was bundled with. It doesn’t matter if your product has nothing to do with the associated content, or if you’re not endorsing the following message whatsoever – a connection is being made by the viewers that you don’t have control over.

Here is a video about the issue from CBS, ironically found on Youtube:

It’s Relevant TV gets your video ads to the right people while removing the risk.

It’s Relevant TV removes the chance of your ad being shown before a lewd or inappropriate video by having only family-friendly videos on the platform. To avoid the risks associated with machine filtering, It’s Relevant TV adds and approves videos 100% manually. A real human being sees each and every video before it goes out on the It’s Relevant TV network.

The FCC protected you from associating your brand with extremely bad content on television for years, by not allowing certain types of content to be broadcast at all. But the same can’t be said for the internet. Anyone can post anything on YouTube and before illegal/inappropriate/controversial videos have a chance to be flagged and taken down, an advertiser’s message can be seen connected to them.

Take your video advertisements to a safer place. Get in touch with It’s Relevant TV for more information. The rates are comparable to YouTube, while putting ads on screen in public places.