Having great content might not be enough to win the battle for eyeballs. The gamification of viewing could be the edge a movie or TV show needs. Rewarded TV delivers it with a web 3.0 viewing platform that unlocks new value in the watching experience.
While at NAB 2023, I spent some time with Bitcentral’s Greg Morrow. One of the projects he told me about was Rewarded TV. Bitcentral creates the linear channels provided by the service. However, Rewarded TV is not a standard FAST platform. It takes a new approach to the flow of value between viewer and content provider and eschews the traditional ads or subscription approach.
What is Rewarded TV?
Rewarded TV is, on the face of it, just another video aggregation and viewing service. It includes on-demand and linear channels providing various content, including comedy, news, documentaries, and much more. However, you won’t see any ads and won’t be asked to give up credit card information and pay a subscription. Instead, the service uses web 3.0 technology to gamify the TV viewing experience and take a different approach to the value exchange between the viewer and content provider.
rewarded tv discover viewRewarded TV was created by the Web 3.0 native Imagine Replay Inc., which describes itself as a “crypto native VoD & live streaming service powered by Replay Blockchain.” Replay uses RPLAY tokens as the currency to exchange value within Rewarded TV. Users can earn RPLAY tokens for watching and completing challenges and use them to unlock access to content available within the experience.
What content providers get out of Rewarded TV
Some content providers might wonder why viewers need to be rewarded for watching. After all, isn’t the content its own reward? Andrea Berry, Head of Business Development at Theta Labs, explains why rewarding viewers with RPLAY tokens matter to content providers:
“It’s a points system, a loyalty system. Airline miles are a great example of gamifying, incentivizing behavior, doing something that makes it more likely that I will only fly Alaska Airlines because I get status, I get my free vacation.”
Viewers get exposed to free content from content providers and can use the RPLAY tokens to buy access to more. They can also buy access from the Theta Marketplace. For example, FlixFling – a free channel on Rewarded TV – also has subscriber-only content. Buying the FlixFling Platato on the Theta Market gives viewers access to the paid content until at least June 2024.