Innovation at VRT : Appiness “Spott” keeps growing

Last week I was invited by the innovation division of VRT (Belgium’s Dutch-speaking public television) for their creative circle III. It consisted in a series of presentations and testing from startups incubated in VRT’s “sandbox” department.

Presentations and demos were given by 5 startups : Fisheye, Limecraft, Moovly, Appiness, Kiswe.

Buy what you see on TV with the Spott mobile app

The demo which very much impressed me was given by Appiness, an Aalst-based startup which created an app called “Spott”. This app is currently being tested on a pool of 300 viewers of VRT and VTM (a commercial Dutch-speaking Belgian broadcaster). It’s a second-screen app that automatically recognizes products displayed on TV (in shows, in series, …) and allows the viewer to purchase them directly from its smartphone.

The app uses an object recognition engine that automatically looks for the products displayed on screen and matches them to a database where objects are stored (with their prices). The algorithm doesn’t run in real-time; it requires that the video be sent 36 hours in advance to be analyzed and prepare the data.

Our take

This app is just revolutionary. Purchasing the items seen on screen has never been so easy and it’s a huge improvement for brands which have now a way to increase their returns on investment when placing products on TV.

Currently the test is limited to 300 users. Given the positive feedback of the Beta-test the app will now be made available to 50000 users and Jonas De Cooman, co-founder of Appiness, said he was in discussion with US broadcasters (CBS, Fox).