How to reach as many people as possible with your TV App?

As a content provider, one of your goals is to reach as many people as possible with your TV app. Right? Basically, there are three important questions you want answered when looking for a new platform on which to launch your TV app:
 

1. How can we reach the biggest audience, globally?
2. How can we monetize our TV app?
3. How much effort does it take to onboard and manage our TV app on the platform?

With these questions in mind, we developed the Metrological Application Platform: a fully integrated, cloud-based TV App Store solution, which is adopted by leading Tier 1 TV operators across the world.

Why should you launch your app on TV operators’ App Stores if your app is already available on several of the biggest streaming platforms? How can you monetize your content? And which development framework can you use to deploy a high-performing TV app on a memory-constrained device, like a set-top box (STB)? All great questions — read on.

Why you should launch your TV app on TV operators' App Stores

TV operators can be great partners for content providers in helping to expand distribution, reach new customers, and monetize content. Set-top boxes are used daily by people with a pay TV subscription. Your TV app's presence on the set-top box means you can reach millions of additional eyeballs.

Accelerate reach with your TV app
U.S. adults spend half of their day connected to media, but they do not all use the same streaming platform or device type to watch their favorite content. Watching TV via the TV operator’s set-top box is one of the preferred viewing experiences. Three quarters of U.S. homes have a pay TV subscription -- which brings you a customer base that is willing to pay for video. Moreover, people spend, on average, almost four hours per day watching TV. Being a part of the TV operator's TV App Store can rapidly accelerate the reach of your TV app.

Monetize your content
Another advantage of getting your app in the TV App Store of an MVPD or TV operator, is that they already have a trusted billing relationship with the TV viewer. This lowers the barrier for the viewer to buy a paid app or to do in-app transactions. There is no need to pull out credit card details, because the app subscription costs are added directly to the operator’s bill.

How to get your app on a set-top box and ready for TV?

If you are looking for growth and potential, having your app available in TV operators' TV app stores is crucial. Most of the content providers experience at least three barriers while trying to get their TV app launched in a TV operator’s App Store:
 

1. Getting in touch with the operator
2. Contract negotiations with the operator
3. Technical barriers

Getting in touch with the operator and contract negotiations
As you might have experienced, getting in touch and negotiating a contract for your TV app with a TV operator or MVPD can be difficult and time-consuming. Imagine the time it will take to negotiate with every operator separately, on your own.

At Metrological we take care of this for you. We have the relationships with the MVPDs and TV operators globally. We handle the legal agreements, and guide you through the onboarding process of your TV app. All you need to take care of is developing your TV app.

Technical challenges
Launching and maintaining an app on multiple platforms can be complex. With that in mind, we set some rules while building the Metrological Application Platform: the platform should be cloud-based, software-independent and able to run on all set-top boxes. Content providers should be able to develop their app once, and deploy on all devices. That is where the Lightning™ Software Development Kit (SDK) comes in.

The power of Lighting™ TV Apps

Lightning is a lightweight, open-source framework for developing UX and TV apps. It is based on JavaScript and leverages HTML5 standards. It contains all the common features you will need when building your TV app.

Lightning allows you to develop, maintain, and deploy one app that can be deployed on multiple devices. It removes the complexity of designing, developing, and launching your app across multiple TV operators and devices.

When deploying at a new customer, it is tempting to simply launch your existing HTML5 app. However, when you try to run such apps on a set-top box, or other device with limited resources, you might encounter problems like a poor performance, memory leaks, out-of-memory crashes, and stability issues. This will not be the case with Lightning.

Compared to other development frameworks, Lightning is built with a focus on TV and is optimized for embedded devices, like set-top boxes. This secures a rich and stunning performance, even on memory constrained, lower-end devices.

Lifecycle management of an app

Next, we manage the onboarding of your TV app at the TV operator. We do everything to make the lifecycle management of your TV app as effortless as possible. You don’t have to worry about keeping your app up and running on all sorts of platforms. As one app fits all, you only have to develop and maintain a single app, which can be deployed across operators and devices.