November 28, 2024

HbbTV Symposium and Awards 2024 brings innovation and collaboration to London

London, 28 November 2024 – The 12th HbbTV Symposium and Awards brought industry leaders together to explore the latest developments driving the future of connected television. The event, hosted by the HbbTV Association and UK platform operator Everyone TV on 14-15 November 2024 in London, offered a platform for broadcasters, operators, TV manufacturers, content owners, advertisers and technology providers to discuss innovation and collaboration.

The conference programme featured keynotes, presentations, panel discussions and roundtables on topics like the integration of streaming and broadcast services, business cases with addressable advertising, deployments of the DVB-I standard, the impact of AI on business models and the latest version of the HbbTV Operator Application specification. One highlight was the showcase of Freely, the streaming service recently launched by Everyone TV, backed by BBC/ITV/Channel 4/Channel 5. The HbbTV-OpApp-based platform provides an example of how collaboration between broadcasters can avoid fragmentation of services.

The 7th HbbTV Awards ceremony in the evening of day one celebrated excellence across six categories, highlighting groundbreaking achievements such as Everyone TV’s Freely service, which won multiple awards for technology innovation, content discovery, marketing impact and newcomer success. Further awards winners include Mediaset España for its AI-based contextual advertising solution and the Addressable TV Initiative (ATVI) for its certification solution ensuring compliance of receivers with the HbbTV-TA specification.

Day two hosted an unconference, allowing participants to propose and engage in discussions directly addressing emerging challenges and opportunities in focused breakout sessions.

“The Symposium confirmed HbbTV’s established role as a core component of Europe’s TV ecosystem. UK broadcasters are shaping next-generation distribution strategies based on HbbTV specifications, while continental players are advancing significantly in addressable advertising with HbbTV-TA. Additionally, the thriving ecosystem of technology providers around HbbTV and the increasing interest from the MENA region highlight the open standard’s growing influence,” said HbbTV Chair Vincent Grivet.

“The Symposium provided the ideal opportunity to share the learnings from the recent development of HbbTV services and applications and allowed Everyone TV to engage with a large number of existing partners and interested stakeholders,” confirmed Jonathan Thompson, CEO of Everyone TV.

With more than 260 participants from Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia, the HbbTV Symposium and Awards 2024 was one of the most well-attended in the 13-year history of the event. The presentations, event brochure and picture gallery, details on the agenda, speakers, sponsors, media partners and HbbTV Awards winners are available on the Symposium website.

The 13th HbbTV Symposium and Awards will take place in 2025 in Istanbul, co-hosted with TVekstra, a Turkish service provider of addressable advertising solutions.