“With our hotspot ad format we can make distinct products part of publishers’ videos and engage viewers with hovers and clicks,” says Ryan Welmans, commercial director at the UK-based company.

“Through our partnership there’s immediate ROI through advertising revenue share,” says Marina Sirotkin, UK country manager for ipercast. “The platform is also combined with social media, so we can help increase traffic, and we can up time spent by adding interactivity to a customer website, which can further boosts returns.

A Red Carpet event online video might, say, feature celebrities wearing a range of clothes and accessories. The digital audience can roll over to initiate an ad unit for a suit or a handbag and the system will lead purchasers through to buying a product from one of its online retail clients.

“We have a number of ad partners with big feeds, such as Marks & Spencer and Tesco, and we match keywords with their products to make it work,” says Welmans.

On the publishing side Invideous works with the likes of Express Group, Future Publishing’s bike magazines and Ireland-based video website Muzu.

“We’ve sold out on the ads side though the publishing side is harder to fulfil,” Welmans says. “We really want to push into hotspot-enabled preroll ads, because from a publishers’ perspective, it should mean higher revenues when we are dealing with millions of views.”

First up is Chicago-based Yawn, with the cameras in tow as they prepare to journey from the Midwest to the East Coast.

From voice and gesture command technology, personalised content discovery to tailored advertising experiences based on preferences, CES exhibitors proved that TV is becoming increasingly interactive.  Manufacturers are beginning to think about how TV interacts with other devices, for example using a tablet or mobile as a remote control and incorporating social media into the viewing experience.

Companies such as Samsung, a market leader in the Connected TV space, are developing break-through technology for TV, gaining traction from the demand that the big sporting events scheduled for 2012 are expected to bring. Connected TV can provide supplementary information about the events and marry social media with video content so people can share their experiences. Furthermore, people will be working and travelling while events are on TV, so being able to watch content on demand and on-the-go will be crucial. Everyone will want access to these major events and Connected TV lets viewers engage on their own terms.

Social is central to connectivity. The fact that Connected TV has tapped into real-time communications makes it appealing. For example, it is possible to comment on running TV shows while using Twitter, Facebook, other websites and mobile phones. Connected TV lets viewers can engage with TV content via social media and this offers advertisers a revolutionary new way to introduce consumers to their products and brand identity.

Connected TV offers a multichannel brand presence which will enable marketers to deliver advertising opportunities which are both targeted and effective. Just 8% of online video advertisers invested in Connected TV in 2011, choosing instead to use iPad (41%), iPhone (42%) and Android platforms (31%). However, this is expected to change in 2012. Even though Apple did not attend CES, discussion at the show centred on Apple TV and how it will add to Apple’s digital ecosystem. Apple TV opens another, more social, channel to consumers, and as it is seamlessly synced with all other devices and with iCloud, it capitalises on multichannel marketing to reach consumers from different mediums.

Like the iPlayer and 4oD, Connected TV brings a new dimension to viewing which makes life easier for consumers. The BBC reported that 7 million programmes were requested via Connected TVs and 1.9 billion programmes were requested for iPlayer this Christmas, showing the popularity of online content. With all their content in one place, consumers will demand video whenever and wherever they want it, on their tablet, gaming device or smartphone – and they expect it at the click of a button. CES 2012 profiled voice and action recognition technology and with Connected TV, viewers will vote, access rich content, blog, tweet and access a plethora of applications all via their TV sets.

Data preferences will overtake the TV guide as Connected TV enables advertisers to learn about audience behaviour. Connected TV therefore offers an ‘ecosystem of data’, a term discussed heavily at CES. Connected TV provides entertainment discovery solutions for television, movies, music and lets consumers intuitively connect to new entertainment from many sources and locations. By complementing this with industry leading entertainment data, connections between people and technology can be created which enable them to discover and manage entertainment in an enjoyable form. Being able to understand viewers’ preferences will let brands target their messaging more effectively. However, brands may also struggle to be noticed and will therefore have to work harder. Watching the same programmes repeatedly can lower viewer attention as we become familiar with the content we consume.

The hype around Connected TV means that advertising needs to adapt and become interactive in order to be effective. It offers the chance for advertisers to produce more sophisticated content and competition will become fierce as brands compete with more video on the Internet. Brands will become more creative in order to maintain engagement. Techniques such as gamification and incentives will generate ROI, with ideas such as pop-up shops and competitions gaining popularity. The added value of interactive video ads will be adopted by consumers, as the use of HTML5 creates an easy-to-use interface for video content which is easier to engage with than on linear TV.

*Shirlene Chandrapal is VP of Connected TV at smartclip

Brands will be looking for insight into exactly who is watching and sharing their videos, including demographics, real-time brand uplift metrics and benchmarking by category. Understanding the true sentiment behind comments at scale will also become increasingly important for advertisers as more users engage and interact with branded content.

“Social video campaigns generated 820 million views in 2009, 2.7 billion views in 2010, and over 8 billion views in 2011, says Unruly. “We are likely to see the number of views delivered from social video campaigns more than double again in 2012.”

“Consumers, especially the younger generation, are growing increasingly accustomed to catching up with previously screened content online,” says David Elms, Head of Media at KPMG. “Currently, many streamed services are available free of charge. Importantly, however, in our survey respondents indicate that they would be willing to pay to access film, music and TV content on demand.”

Online newspapers and magazines, as well as digital books are becoming increasingly popular, a trend which appears to be driven by the expanding tablet and eReader market. More than half of respondents have read online newspapers in the last month – compared to 40% six months ago – and 14% said have read digital books (against 8% six months ago).

The Your Film Festival is a global contest to find a single filmmaker who will get a cool half a million dollars’ worth of production grant. Participants need to submit their short – 15 minutes or less – story-driven videos to the dedicated YouTube channel. The viral-video outfit says all genres and formats are welcome, including live action, animation, documentary, web-series episode and TV pilot.

A Scott Free team will select 50 semi-finalists by June 2012, and YouTube users will then vote for their favorites to select a final line-up of 10, whose videos will then be screened at the 2012 Venice Film Festival. A jury led by Ridley Scott will crown one grand prizewinner, who will receive a $500,000 grant to work with the director’s team to create a new story.

“Short filmmaking is exactly where I started my career 50 years ago, so to be helping new filmmakers find an entry point like this into the industry is fantastic,” says Scott.

The director has partnered with YouTube in the past for the movie Life In A Day, which was crowdsourced from the YouTube community. The film, backed by consumer electronics brand LG, bowed at last year’s Sundance Film Festival.