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C4 digs for ‘oil’ in mobile market

MIPDOC: The UK’s Channel 4 will continue to push for the collection of viewer data with specific focus on the mobile phone market in 2012, the channel’s multiplatform commissioning editor for factual has told C21.

Speaking ahead of his keynote address at MipDoc in Cannes yesterday, Adam Gee outlined his forthcoming plans for data collection, which the channel’s CEO David Abraham last year described as “the new oil.”

Gee said he believed broadcasters are still in a better position for such data-harvesting because the linear channel gives them opportunities not available to the likes of Facebook, Twitter and You Tube.

He told C21: “It’s to do with developing relationships with the audience, and gathering data in a way that is not only open but also a fair exchange with the viewer. Having a loyal and committed audience whose movement you can measure and track gives you an option to rethink how advertising works and put a value on things that previously didn’t have a value.”

Gee has greenlit three apps to run alongside a second series of Maverick TV’s Embarrassing Bodies Live From the Clinic, which launches later this year. The channel also has plans for a second run of Keo Films’ campaigning series Fish Fight, for which Gee said he also has multiplatform developments in the pipeline.

He said: “Every year with Embarrassing Bodies I’ve used it as a platform to experiment and that’s how Live From the Clinic came about last year. This year, I want the team to focus on what Embarrassing Bodies mobile should look like. It’s a very different mobile world since we last focused on this in 2008 so we’ll be launching three Embarrassing Bodies apps that push the boundaries in different ways.”

The first, My Mole Checker, is already in the App Store with two more to follow. Gee estimated Channel 4 has saved the National Health Service £400,000 (US$640,000) with its online and mobile health-checker systems by reducing hospital and doctor visits.

He also sought to allay fears over how people’s data will be used by the channel, where it will go and what control they will have over it after surrendering it to the channel. Gee said: “There’s no paranoia providing it’s a fair exchange. There’s only paranoia when you’re not sure why the data is being asked for and you’re not getting anything back in return.

“The way the data is handled is very open, you will have very full control over it, you can delete it, amend it and correct it as you like. We will have video, human language, summaries of what the terms and conditions mean so that reality of the web where everybody hits the agree box without reading it because you haven’t got a choice won’t happen.

“All the time we’re looking to provide something in exchange for the data. It might be an online premier or a service that people want to use, like My Health Checker. If you want people to register and continue to log in you’ve got to have something worthwhile giving away.”

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