Speaking at the Association’s annual Symposium in Naples, Vincent Grivet said that while many people said watching television would be replaced by social networks or that people would do so on a small screen “watching TV remains super important and watching TV happens mainly on a large TV screen”.
Grivet said the big change had taken place in the growth of streaming, which HbbTV could not ignore, given that the protocol was fundamentally hybrid.
“Of course, streaming is big, streaming is growing, but linear and broadcast are still very important in usage and in value. And it is so important that streaming is changing and the streaming champions, like the Netflix, etc, they are actually absorbing the codes, the DNA of broadcast TV, which is linear and ad funded.”
Grivet said that the established broadcasters were continuing to push ahead with their own OTT offers, highlighting recent announcements from the UK public broadcasters to create the Freely platform that would be based around HbbTV, and, in France, the creation of TF1+.
He also pointed to the “rush towards addressable TV”, which he said HbbTV was taking control of in linear. “HbbTV is identified in the market as a technology that is suitable for addressable advertising in linear, and addressable advertising in linear is super important.”
Source: broadbandtvnews.com
