Situation: -

• C-SPAN has embarked on an aggressive campaign to recruit younger viewers and ramp up its social media presence.
• As part of this campaign, C-SPAN tapped attracTV to deliver a customized interactive solution for its broadcast of the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner featuring humorous speeches from President Barack Obama and Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers.

Objectives:

• In reaching out to attracTV, C-SPAN’s objectives were to propagate the perception that C-SPAN is social media savvy while turning the event into an opportunity for engagement with viewers.
• By using attracTV, C-SPAN hoped to drive traffic to and keep people on its page for the duration of the event.

Solution:

• C-SPAN and attracTV’s worked together to create a customized interface for the official feed from the dinner, on a dedicated page within C-SPAN.org. The page offered viewers the opportunity to answer poll questions, follow and post to social networks, and view videos from past years’ events while watching the program.

Results:

• The collaboration was an enormous success. Tens of thousands of people logged onto C-SPAN.org during the event, racking up thousands of poll responses, video streams, tweets, and Facebook status updates.
• All told, viewers watched nearly a million minutes of coverage during the event.
• Media around the country touted the feed, with reporters from the National Journal, the Chicago Sun-Times, and many other outlets driving readers to the C-SPAN.org feed of the event.

Testimonial:

attracTV is proud to announce that its services can now be used by Kaltura’s clients. The attracTV plug in is now part of the Kaltura Application Exchange – a virtual marketplace for publishers, developers, integrators and web shops to “trade” in video applications related to the Kaltura open source online video platform.

To see a demo of attracTV plugin using Kaltura’s media player and platform - click here.

To Visit attracTV’s plug in page in Kaltur’a Exchange – click here.

Fans Offered Unparalleled Access to Show with Online Platform for Sharing, Viewing, and Discussing Show-Related Content

New York, NY (4/18/2011) – attracTV, creator of the premiere platform for running interactive, customizable widgets over streaming video, announced that it is teaming up with MTV International on 18 April, at 8 PM EST to stream a concert from The Black Eyed Peas.

attracTV’s platform (http://www.attractv.com) allows broadcasters like MTV to augment live streaming video by incorporating interactive “Vidgets^TM” overlaying the stream. During the concert, which will be streamed live from the legendary Terminal 5 in New York City online, international viewers (excluding China and UK) will be able to chat about the Black Eyed Peas in real time, answer live polls, and watch video clips from the event with their friends.

“We are delighted to be continuing our relationship with MTV International,” said Tzahi Sofer, attracTV’s co-founder and CEO. “With our technology, millions of viewers from around the world will be able to participate in a communal experience with music fans and car lovers from around the world.”

The stream is part of the celebrations marking the reveal of the Volkswagen 21st Century Beetle, with the Black Eyed Peas performing at 8p.m. EST.

“MTV World Stage has become synonymous with providing fans everywhere access to amazing live performances that they otherwise couldn’t see,” said Gary Ellis, vice president of MTV International Digital Media. “The attracTV platform allows fans to not only view the concert as though they were in the front row, but engage with multiple screens simultaneously, including interactive chat widgets, polls, and multi-screen activities.”

attracTV, based in Tel Aviv with offices in New York City, is a pioneer in providing full solutions for managing interactive overlays onscreen, with dynamic, innovative content and advertisement overlay solutions. Founded in 2008 by Tzahi Sofer and Guy Tomer, who both have broad backgrounds in computer technology and accumulated management experience in several startup companies, attracTV is a privately held company backed by Jerusalem Capital and private investors.

Want to know your viewers’ opinions on a certain subject? Want to get your viewers more engaged? You can do it with this poll vidget – and in real time!.

• Voting updates in real time
• Attach pictures to answers
• Defining different polls and popping them up in real time
• NEW! Share the poll with a social network directly via the vidget
• NEW! Auto resizing poll by the number of answers

attracTV has partnered with Gigya, provider of social optimization tools for online businesses, to create a live chat vidget powered by Gigya Social Sign-on solution. This vidget, outperforming all previews social solutions for MTV Digital’s recent Video Music Awards online broadcast, allows viewers to sign-in and chat with other viewers via their preferred social network, watch predefined news feeds and update their status in different social networks simultaneously with a single click.

” Our video VMA VIP View built on the attracTV platform enabled fans to chat, take instant polls, watch, read and share content about behind the scenes action and more. This clearly resonated with fans; the stream garnered an astounding half a million streams, outperforming the 2009 stream by 17% in streams and 71% in unique, with viewers spending an average of nearly twenty five minutes on the site. ” (DigiDay)

5Qs with Kristin Frank of MTV ,September 21, 2010

attracTV and MTV joined forces for the recent live online broadcast of the VMAs, delivering a state of the art, record breaking experience for the online viewers. So, what did we have there? Real time and predefined polls, live blog posts, instant replays (!), a vibrant live chat (Gigya), real time announcements, updated winners list, a Yahoo! search box and much much more.

Here are some screen shots from the night of the event:

And from the press:

MTV Brings Fans Behind-the-Scenes of the 2010 Video Music Awards (VMA) with Online Live-Stream and Interactive “VMA VIP Pass” Experience Powered by attracTV

Fans Offered Unparalleled Insider Access to Show Live-Stream with Interactive Platform that Allows for Sharing, Viewing, Discussing and Participating in Show-Related Content

Tel Aviv, Israel (10/09/2010) – In anticipation of the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) attracTV inc. (http://www.attractv.com <http://www.attractv.com> ), developer of the first self-service Vidget (widget over video) Platform, announced today a partnership with MTV to power the “VMA VIP Pass” – a live, behind-the-scenes online experience of the 27th annual event. The platform incorporates interactive widgets over the night of live stream, which includes red carpet and back stage camera feeds, that allow fans to chat, share viral show moments, view nominated videos and receive real-time alerts on winners, in addition to access to VMA-related celebrity news and the ability to participate in VMA real-time polls. The “VMA VIP Pass” experience is sponsored by Yahoo and will be streamed live starting at 7 p.m. ET on September 12 at MTV.com.

“We are very excited to support MTV in delivering this wonderful and unique online viewing experience for the 2010 VMAs,” said Tzahi Sofer, attracTV’s co-founder and CEO. “attracTV is a pioneer in providing full solutions for managing interactive overlays onscreen, with dynamic, innovative content and advertisement overlay solutions.”

“MTV.com has become a trusted source for providing fans with unparalleled access to music’s biggest night ,” said Kristin Frank, general manager of MTV and VH1 Digital. “The attracTV platform allows fans to not only view the VMA behind the scenes live-stream, but engage in many things at once, including interactive chat widgets and polls, update on award results and editorially relevant searches powered by MTV and Yahoo!”

attracTV’s self-service is currently only open to publishers via invitation (http://www.attractv.com/contact-us <http://www.attractv.com/contact-us> ); complete open rollout is slated for the end of 2010. Following an approved invitation request, a publisher can open an account and independently manage vidgets, whether off-the-shelf or self-owned. Developers and advertisers interested in developing vidgets and offering them to publishers can do so using attracTV’s Developers’ Guide.

“Recent, successful launches with several leading publishers has proven that viewers are keen to engage in different kinds of activities while watching their favorite content online” adds Mr. Sofer. “Now, with the rise of professional online video content, the ubiquity of high speed internet and the role that internet services play in everyone’s lives, new business and monetization opportunities arise – and this is where attracTV shakes up the world of video.”

attracTV is excited to announce the beta launch of our self service platform – Starting August 3rd, 2010, publishers can access the website, apply for an account, and start using vidgets on their video for free.



We currently support JW player, YouTube videos, and also offer attracTV’s video player. Brightcove integration is also available in test mode (with an official integration coming soon) and others are on the way. You can also integrate the vidget gallery into any flash player you use with minimal efforts.
The platform is currently open by invitation only, so if you are an online video publisher and wish to give it a try just drop us a note here and we’ll get back to you with more details.Click here to learn more on what you get by using attracTV’s solution.
In addition, We’ve also released a beta version of our Vidget Development Guide with helpful samples, so if you’re a flash developer or you just have your own crazy ideas for vidgets – you’re welcome to download them here.