iBeacon Brings Innovation to Traditional Media

BEIJING, June 8, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Faced with the challenge of new media, how will traditional media react? How to improve the "speed" of broadcasting and the level of "interactivity" with the new iBeacon technique? China Central Television (CCTV), one of the most influential traditional media in China, started one valuable pilot program from April 30 to May 3, which includes the International Labor Day holiday (May 1 - May 3). Based on the 4200+ intelligent sensor made by Sensoro and deployed in 40 Chinese top level tourist attractions, the 4-day interactive program has 1 million people covered and almost 150,000 tourists participated. That is to say, the usage of the iBeacon technique has brought innovation to traditional media.

After investigation of the iBeacon market in China, CCTV chose Yunzi, the intelligent sensor made by Sensoro. With 4200 Yunzi deployed, the largest intelligent sensor net in broadcasting history has been built. It is also a technical test for the iBeacon industry.

During the International Labor Day holiday, Chinese tourist attractions were crowded with millions of tourists. CCTV News Channel, which has an audience of about 1.3 billion (95% of the population of China), cooperating with the Chinese National Tourism Bureau, set up the interactive platform via the iBeacon technique in 40 5A-level (AAAAA) tourist attractions. On the platform, tourists were able to interact with CCTV News Channel, which included participating in the real time news survey, uploading videos or photos, and submitting complaints and emergency news clues.

Tourist attractions interactive platform

The tourist attractions interactive platform consisted of 4 parts:

• 4200+ Sensoro Yunzi iBeacon deployed in 40 5A-level tourist attractions
• 40 H5 (HTML5) content pages customized for each tourist attraction
• WeChat with proximity shake feature, which covers 400 million users
• Interactive BigData backend platform

The participants have different roles. CCTV designed the content; WeChat provides the platform to push the H5 content to tourists; Sensoro is responsible for deploying iBeacon hardware, technique support and developing/operating the interactive BigData backend platform.

After the tourists entered the tourist attractions, in each 500-1000 m² program interactive area, tourists got the H5 page from their smart phone through the WeChat proximity shake feature and then participated in the news survey and upload their own photo and video content.

In the process, the iBeacon provides precision positioning, content mapping and real time interactivity. Based on iBeacon's Bluetooth broadcast, tourists could be navigated to the H5 page customized for each tourist attraction through WeChat proximity shake and then they could opt-in the program. Because WeChat is so popular, tourists didn't need to install new apps, which decreases the new app promotion cost and difficulty for participants, which could avoid disturbing tourists and motivate participation from passive to active.

Beside the WeChat app and H5 page, interactive platform BigData backend is critical too. The backend provided the total participation statistics, real time participation activity analysis, survey result analysis, and it also filtered uploaded content for news editors.

Tourist participation and real time interactivity with CCTV

Because of the impact of new media in recent years, traditional media are looking for ways to improve interactivity with audience for more attention. Among them, the CCTV News Channel is leading the effort in this area. The iBeacon technique based tourist attractions interactive platform supported by Sensoro shows its effort.

To enhance mass participation, CCTV projected different interactive topics as below. And the interactive page also provided rank score and "Tag" sections to decrease the difficulty of participation. When the tourist wanted to further participate, he/she could upload videos or photos on the next page.

On May 1^st, a tourist shared a lodging invoice he received, which indicated the price was 4-5 times higher than normal and it became the focal point. After the tourist uploaded a photo of the invoice, it took only a few hours before lots of media reposted the topic from the CCTV New Channel. Therefore, the platform's real time ability is fully demonstrated. The related report is at http://news.cntv.cn/2015/05/01/VIDE1430476376915359.shtml.

On May 2^nd, tourists uploaded a lot of photos and videos on whether it was crowed. One tourist's sentence from Kong Tong Mountain: "It is so crowd that my face is almost pushed against other's butt" became the hot sentence on the Internet. The related report is at http://m.news.cntv.cn/2015/05/02/ARTI1430557805729692.shtml.

In the news collection model, CCTV editors' work is to set topics and choose content uploaded from tourists. From the new media technique, CCTV achieved a high degree of interactivity to complete an interesting TV program without sending a reporter to the scene. Instead, tourists became the "reporters."

The media's supervision role was also well developed in this model. On the platform, tourists became the media's "informant." On the last day of the program, improper actions in tourist attractions were focused on and related source materials were uploaded -- some of which were reported in CCTV. They have gained social attention and tourist attraction management teams are working towards a solution. The related report is at http://news.cntv.cn/2015/05/03/VIDE1430656919549747.shtml.

The program supported by Sensoro was completed successfully that day.

In-depth analysis for iBeacon usage in TV programs

1. The usage of the iBeacon technique supported by Sensoro in news programs and telestudios is a trend. iBeacon based interactivity could support many people to participate simultaneously. Compared with traditional voting machines, it could do the survey from person in a preset range. But its cost is lower and it is more interesting for participants. This method is more flexible, and easy for backend management and BigData analysis.
2. Based on the large app platform: on one hand, the program is based on WeChat, which already has a large amount of users, so the program could achieve large audience coverage in a short time. On the other hand, WeChat has limitations on photos and videos uploaded and it has made much challenge on the backend platform design for Sensoro. However, some tourists' WeChat versions were too low to support proximity shake, for which some valuable resource was lost.
3. iBeacon network sharing: in the program, 4200+ iBeacons are deployed in 40 tourist attractions in China. The major cost of the project is the Beacon deployment and maintenance. After the program, iBeacons were still used for other purpose such as commercial advertising. We could imagine, in next few years, with more and more iBeacon deployed in worldwide, the iBeacon resource will be shared in iBeacon network for different programs and the cost of the program will decrease. In turn, such program will be more and more popular. The technique keeps changing everyone's life.

Contact: Vivian, Marketing, [email protected]; Jessie, Media, [email protected]

SOURCE Beijing Sensoro Technology Co.,Ltd.