Friday, July 22, 2016

What I built hacking in Seattle


At last week's NBCU hackathon, the Advengers assembled to build something cool.  


Our criteria for "cool": both technically ambitious and highly impactful.

This post is about what we built and why we built it.

You can see the presentation/demo from the hackathon here.  Should have a better demo next week.


What did we build?


We built adHarmony, a second screen1 app for advertising.  
While you watch TV, the app listens for advertisements.  When the app hears an ad, it asks you what you think of it and gives you options like "learn more" and "skip the ad". Simple.


Why would anyone ever download this app?


DISCLAIMER: This opinion is based on my loose understanding of other humans and stuff I've read.
People want the app because...
  • they like to earn rewards for something they do anyway
  • they hate sitting through irrelevant ads, and sometimes they can skip them
  • the feedback they provide improves the future ads they see
  • The user experience is unobtrusive and fun (addictive)


More about the user experience


AdHarmony sits idle in the background while the viewer watches TV and goofs off on their phone.  If the user wants to engage, great!  If they don't want to engage, they just ignore the push notification.

The variable reward system makes the app fun and a little addictive.  Only some ads can be skipped/give bonuses, making it exciting to swipe ads.  We modeled the design after the principals taught by Nir Eyal in his book about building habit-forming apps.


AdHarmony's experience follows Nir Eyal's habit-forming cycle



What's the point?


When adHarmony hears an advertisement, the TV publisher knows who watched the ad. Really, that's it.  Not razzled? Let me explain.


adHarmony Information Flow

The TV advertising industry has this problem: it's hard to keep track of who is watching ads across devices that TV is watched on.  Sure, it's always been annoying to track, but it's gotten much trickier as people watch TV on everything: tablets, connected devices, etc.

Ok...so why is that a problem?  It's a problem because of how TV advertising is sold: on an audience guarantee.  Audience guarantees mean the advertiser only pays for the ad when it gets seen by the demographic they bought. If the wrong person watched the ad, no one gets paid.
Bear with me...
If you lost me there, that's ok.  Here's the point...


When you see an ad that doesn't apply to you, you're not the only one to find it annoying.
  1. You don't want to see it because it's not applicable
  2. The advertiser doesn't care that you saw it because you'll never buy it
  3. The publisher doesn't want you to see because they don't get paid

Doesn't that drive you crazy?  The ads that are MOST annoying don't benefit anyone!  It's just a huge waste of time and money, like serving a steak to a vegan.  AdHarmony helps that happen less.


Therein lies the rub


So, that's the rub: we built something to help users see fewer ads they don't like, publishers make more money from their content, and advertisers get a higher ROI.


Stay tuned for next week's exciting conclusion where we look under the hood at how it works.  Spoiler: dark magic.



1 What is a second screen app?


A second screen app is something you play around with on your iphone/tablet while you watch TV. 



Say you're watching "America's Got Talent" on TV.  You might download the app: America's got Tablets™ on your ipad to read more about the performers, vote along with the show, or share clips you like on Twitter and Facebook.  (Yes, I just made that up, but you get the gist.)

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