[Video] 8K resolution TV’s & Smart Content: what does it mean for advertisers?

AMASA Forum Johannesburg Feb 2015: Aki Anastasiou - Talk Radio 702 host and Presenter of Tech Busters on CNBC Africa - discusses CES 2015 the key trends that are emerging in this space and Content… VIDEO TV talk went big at CES 2015 Anastasiou explains that a few years ago, HD was the next big thing in Television and we watched as TV screens became bigger and thinner. Then last year, 4K televisions broke onto the scene with picture resolution four times that of HD. This year, 8K resolution emerged and TV viewing just got a whole lot more realistic. The issue of course is that there is very little content that supports such high resolution at this point, but this will change with time. The emergence of smart content that can be streamed directly to TV screens is another big game changer in the TV viewing sphere. The Samsung TV for example is now really a computer that houses all of the household entertainment from movies, to playstation games, to skype across the world. With all of this on the cards, TV’s were certainly a big topic at CES 2015. Another topic that garnered attention at CES 2015 was that of 3D printing. There has been a rapid decrease in the price of the printers, the list of materials that you are now able to print with continues to grow and the impact of this technology will become increasingly evident with time. Wearable technology continues to be a topic of interest and… well... an interesting topic. Do people really want to wear a glorified pedometor? With the internet of things, all of the devices that individuals use for day to day are becoming increasingly intelligent, they talk to each other, and gather useful data for marketers. With the launch of the Apple watch on the horizon, the wearables space is expected to gain momentum. Vehicles are becoming extremely high tech with major vehicle manufacturers at CES. Self-driving cars are expected to hit the roads within the next 10 years - which will result in less cars on the roads, less congestion, and of course big implications for insurance providers and the like. Content consumption on the consumer’s terms... The entire world is creating and consuming a lot more media than ever before and with the emergence of all these new forms of technology, it’s set to increase. “People want to watch content at a time that is convenient for them and we’re seeing this trend make its way into South Africa with the likes of Multichoice’s BoxOffice and PVR solutions,” says Anastasiou. There are obviously going to be implications for advertisers with these changes in content consumption and it will be interesting to see how advertisers evolve in the space.