The Awards Categories

Technologies that change the way people use and view TV are immensely powerful tools for TV operators and content providers as well as for consumers themselves. The Advanced TV Innovation award will go to a technology or service that has delivered a new and better form of TV experience – whether by enabling viewers to view content in new ways, by overcoming a technical or commercial challenge in bringing new services to market or delivering a measurable improvement in the overall quality of a service.

Some video services immediately stand out and set the standard for others to follow. The Advanced TV Service of the Year award will be presented to a video service provider that has truly delivered something new and compelling to the market that meets the needs of consumers through genuine innovation.

As streaming grows in popularity and pay TV service providers adjust to a world where consumers demand every greater choice and flexibility, serving as a ‘super aggregator’ of multiple app-based services is becoming the norm. This award goes to a service provider or service-enabling technology that has gone beyond aggregating multiple direct-to-consumer apps by offering compelling additional ‘super aggregator’ functionality to its customers.

The number and variety of options facing consumers means that competition for attention has never been greater. Media owners and service providers need to find ways to improve consumer engagement with their offerings more urgently than ever. The Customer Engagement Innovation of the Year award recognises an innovation that improves and increases customer engagement with advanced TV services. 

Distributing live sports via streaming is a challenging but potentially revolutionary development in the delivery and consumption of sports. This award goes to an innovation that delivers compelling new sports viewing experiences.

Streaming, which has revolutionized video consumption, presents different challenges and opportunities to legacy broadcast tech. This award goes to a new technology or innovative implementation of a technology – for example video processing or CDN technology – that has helped deliver video to end-users efficiently and in high quality.

Free Advertising-supported Streaming Television is growing rapidly as content rights holders seek to monetise existing assets and expand their streaming reach beyond SVOD. This award goes to a compelling technology or service innovation in the FAST space that has made a significant postive impact in the last year.

The application of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to video distribution is still in its infancy but promises to transform the business in multiple ways. This award will honour the most innovative use of AI or ML in the context of video distribution over the course of the year.

New and established content service providers are seeking to build compelling streaming offerings at a time of intensifying competition in the digital video distribution space. This award goes to a ground-breaking offering, service initiative or technology that has met with market success in the last year.

The increasingly competitive nature of the streaming business means that content service providers are under pressure to get services up and running quickly, operating efficiently and at a high standard. The Streaming Platform Technology of the Year award recognises a platform technology that enables streaming service providers to deliver a best-in-class service to its target audience.

Ensuring that service providers’ revenues are protected is critical to their commercial survival and success. Revenue security encompasses everything from antipiracy measures to ensuring that consumers are encouraged and incentivised to pay for services. This award goes to a service or technology innovation that has had a measurable positive impact on revenue security over the last year.

With more content coming from more soruces, enabling viewers to find the services and content they want is becoming of crucial importance in preventing churn, enhancing revenue and improving overall satisfaction. The UX and Content Discovery award goes the most compelling innovation in improving the user journey and matching users with content they want to watch.

With linear TV viewing facing a long-term decline, the lifeblood of free TV – advertising – is under threat. But broadcasters and brands are working hard to experiment with and deploy targeting, personalisation, branded content and interactive campaigns. The Next Gen Advertising Award goes to the most outstanding innovation that is helping advertisers and media owners increase the value and appeal of advertising and open up new ways to monetise content effectively. 

Innovation in technology and services can’t happen without the involvement of highly talented staff and managers. This award will go to a senior video industry technologist responsible for delivering a particularly compelling and impactful consumer video service.

Success is hard-won in the TV world. Repeated success is even harder. The Lifetime Achievement Award recognises an outstanding individual who has achieved the rare distinction of delivering, inspiring or executing innovation time and again over the course of their career.