Swrve adds support for OTT TV apps
The expansion of the app-oriented marketing platform highlights OTT’s increasing attractiveness for marketers and Swrve’s continued expansion.
Some of the programming services offered on Roku
Despite its name, Swrve hasn’t swerved in its evolution from its origins as a marketing and engagement platform for apps.
Instead, it’s taken a series of steps toward its positioning as a customer interaction platform. In 2014, for instance, it added support for iBeacons, which are usually paired with apps. Later that year, Swrve declared itself an open platform that would play nice with others, and it now offers functional integrations with nearly three dozen platforms like Salesforce and Marketo.
And, earlier this year, it announced that its full integration with Oracle’s Eloqua campaign tool added in-app analytics, testing, targeting and messaging to that platform.
Today, the San Francisco-based Swrve is expanding its scope again, announcing that it will now support analytics, testing, marketing and engagement for several over-the-top (OTT) TV platforms — Apple TV, Roku, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV and Chromecast.
CEO Christopher Dean told me that his company’s platform will eventually support OTT TV on connected TVs that have proprietary operating systems, like LG.
This wider scope is “an extension of what we do,” he said. While other vendors like Tru Optik offer targeting and some marketing/advertising capabilities for OTT TV, Dean said Swrve’s newest addition makes it “the first customer interaction platform for OTT branding, engagement and retention.”
TV programming apps like Crackle and Netflix can integrate with Swrve’s software development kit (SDK) and get access to several marketing tools.
There are promotional “tip overlays,” where a Swrve screen appears on part of the TV screen to inform viewers about new features, like the start of a seven-day free trial or a new category.
On-screen overlays, emails, SMS texts or push notifications to a program service’s associated mobile app can be used to send messaging that is based on viewing patterns for cross-selling, upselling, retaining or onboarding customers. Here’s an example of upsell messaging:
And Swrve offers analytics and A/B testing to the integrated program services. Dean said these tools have led to uplifts in average revenue per user of up to 30 percent during the pilot phase of OTT support.
Program services can load their historical data — including both behavioral info and customer relationship profiles — into Swrve, plus there are backend adaptors for real-time access to the programming service’s data.
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