The TV Interface Is the Key To Pretty Much Everything

One of the things we’ve been harping on for the past year or so is the centrality of the battle for the TV interface or OS (operating system) to the “streaming wars.” 

That interface, formerly controlled by the MVPD set top box, is the first thing the viewer sees when they turn on their TV, and their decision on everything from which TV they ultimately buy to whether to ditch their dongle to what show they will watch that night is influenced by their TV interface.

Which is why it is worth ruminating on the news that VIZIO, one of the Big Three US smart TV manufacturers  is adopting SpringServe’s Tiles solution as part of its SmartCast home screen interface as a way to further enhance its users’ content discovery experience.

The smart TV home screen has been undergoing something of a revolution in and of itself, from one kind of tile, if you will, to another.

Allow me to explain.

Roku’s surprising success back in the early to mid 10s was largely due to the simplicity of their interface.

They essentially took the popular tile layout from the iPhone and recreated it for the TV screen.

This worked quite well, given how most people watched streaming at the time. Since it’s been a few years, let’s all remember that back then there were not all that many streaming services and thus people generally turned on the TV knowing exactly what they wanted to watch, both the service and the show.

That made Roku’s iPhone-like tiles a very efficient way of finding what you wanted, especially if 90 percent of what you wanted was on Netflix, Amazon or Hulu, all three of which could be handily dragged onto the top row for easy access.

Fast-forward to 2022, however, and there are a whole lot of options available on streaming, which for many viewers has become their primary TV-watching platform.

Thus a different type of interface is called for, one that lays out all of the viewer’s many options in an easy to navigate manner. It’s based on the assumption that, as in days of yore, viewers often turn on the TV without a clear destination in mind, searching for something to watch.

“The home screen is important because it’s the place from which you jump off to all the content that you're going to consume,” notes SpringServe General Manager Joe Hirsch. “It's the user's first impression of ‘what should I watch today?’” 

Hence the beauty of Tiles, which allows various content partners to customize their home screen tiles and promote recommendations to viewers from within the main SmartCast home page. The experience is seamless and is designed to enhance the overall user experience while also providing value to content partners.

“We are continuously looking for opportunities to improve the experience for engaged audiences through innovative and contextually relevant content and messaging,” said Travis Hockersmith, Group Vice President, Platform+ at VIZIO. “SpringServe’s Tiles helps deliver personalized experiences, and simplify the search and discovery process for millions of users, whether searching for subscription or free content.”

Improving the user experience also increases the amount of time that viewers spend on the TV in general and on specific content that is recommended to them via Tiles in particular. This increases revenue all around, as the time spent watching (aka “time spent on platform”) becomes more and more critical to the success of programmers and OEMs alike, ad-supported programmers in particular. It is an important reason why the interface has become the object of so much focus.

“We created Tiles to bring the precision of video ad serving to the content discovery experience users see when they turn on their connected TVs,” add Hirsch. “This technology, built off the IAB native ads spec, gives TV manufacturers like VIZIO additional non-interruptive ad experiences in the form of pause ads and sponsored scene selection.”

These capabilities make Tiles a win all around and yet another reason (additional revenue opportunities) the interface is so important for manufacturers, programmers and, ultimately, consumers.