Sunnyvale, California — For a medium heavily ridiculed for its zombie-making capabilities, television is certainly taking on more of an active role as the next generation of Yahoo Connected TV’s that will recognize what a viewer is watching so advertisers can develop profiles and serve personalized ads.
Yahoo is apparently set to get in on the TV widget concept with Connected TV on Sony and Toshiba models, but that is not all… Coming hot on the heels of earlier announcements that Apple was looking to add widgets to our television watching experience comes news that now, Yahoo!’s connected-TV platform, which includes more than 140 applications, now can be found on more than 8 million devices, the company said June 27.
Although Yahoo states there is no need to crack the tin-foil hats, the next generation of Yahoo Connected TVs are going to start doing something consumers might find creepy: a new application dubbed “broadcast interactivity” will automatically discover what a viewer is watching and use that information to help advertisers and publishers serve up content that directly appeals to viewers’ interests.
Yahoo’s Connected TV program offers up a variety of widgets to enhance your television viewing, featuring things like social media network access so you can tell everybody about the Storage Wars marathon you are watching on A&E, as well as give you the possibilities of voting in various polls, or even just getting coupons for some snack treats whilst enjoying the afore-named marathon.
The company also disclosed on its blog that 2012 will see several HDTV manufacturers integrate the Yahoo! connected-TV application into new HDTVs, including Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, LG and Vizio, including global distributors Haier, Hisense and Vestel.
“Yahoo! will soon unfurl the Y! Connected TV Store, which its television manufacturing partners will include in their new sets later this year,” the blog reads. “Apps will be sold for 99 cents to $99, with 70% of the revenue going to publishers and developers. And Yahoo! is seeking advertisers to work on campaigns that leverage broadcast interactivity and device control, so they can hit the ground running when the technologies go public.”
Of course, it will also cater to a whole new category of advertising specifically geared toward what you are watching, which is a little less pleasant, but still.
And that is not where the surprises end, the old, yodeling tech giant is not stopping there — word is that the company also plans to trot out an app store by the years’ end, with help from some names like Ford and HSN, to help put some extra function in your Connected TV system.
So, if widget-based ads are your favorite, then you might want to hold off until the big manufacturer roll-out next year.