Innovations from Freely and CCMA’s 3Cat win acclaim at 2025 HbbTV Awards

A total of 29 submissions were received during the call for entries – reportedly one of the highest numbers in the competition’s eight-year history.

Held on 12 November 2025, the event was jointly hosted by the HbbTV Association and Turkish addressable TV advertising solution provider TVekstra.

Discussing some of the trends seen in this year’s entries, Vincent Grivet, Chairman of the HbbTV Association, said: “AI, accessibility, and better discovery of content are the main innovation themes [this year]. Of course, addressable advertising with many very interesting variations and creative ideas is, as always, quite dynamic. Also, several of the B2C innovations go in the direction of better matching the new viewing/consumption styles of the younger generation, and that is very smart from broadcasters who, of course, face the risk of ageing audiences.

“But we should not forget B2B innovation; there an intense and very interesting activity of companies creating very smart solutions to make the creation, deployment, and management of HbbTV services easier and faster.”

2025’s winners

This year’s Best Accessibility Solution in an HbbTV Service award went to the sign language service in HbbTV with WebAssembly. Developed by Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (CCMA)/3Cat in Spain, this solution also recently received a special mention at the fifth edition of the TM Broadcast Awards in the category of best innovation project.

When explaining their final decision, the HbbTV jury described this solution as: “a highly innovative approach, taking advantage of modern web technology combined with HbbTV.”

Likewise, Grivet praised the deployment of the binary instruction format that takes advantage of common hardware capabilities, explaining that: “WebAssembly enables broadcasters and app developers to innovate and use features that previously needed support from device manufacturers. It decouples the pace of innovations from the TV industry development cycle and enables innovation to address some of the installed base of HbbTV TV sets.”

The Best Advertising Innovation Using HbbTV went to TVekstra for its Pınar Protein Milk – Bringing the Energy of Volleyball Home campaign. For this award-winner, the jury highlighted: “The campaign showed real innovation in bringing together a brand and live sport scores to increase engagement.”

This solution was actually one of two TVekstra systems that were recognised in the HbbTV Awards 2025 shortlist – the other being the Terra Pizza Gamification CTV Campaign.

In a LinkedIn post announcing its placements in the shortlist, TVekstra enthused: “Both campaigns showcase how TVekstra is redefining connected TV advertising in Turkey with interactive, data-driven, and engaging viewer experiences.”

In the Best HbbTV Technology Innovation category, Everyone TV (UK) took home the prize for its Freely Account Linking initiative. Freely, a collaboration between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and 5, launched in 2024 to ensure all audiences can continue to enjoy and easily access free TV in the streaming age. The free streaming platform, already integrated into new smart TVs and coming to ‘plug-in and stream’ devices later in 2025, brings together live and on-demand shows from the UK’s biggest broadcasters all in one place, without the need for a dish, aerial or monthly subscription.

For this collaborative thinking, the jury commended the solution, calling it: “An elegantly executed innovation that bridges broadcast and streaming through seamless account linking, redefining user personalisation in hybrid TV.”

Other solutions shortlisted in this category included the HbbTV Interactive Chat Companion by MFE – Mediaset (Spain) and the Hybrid Enabler, which was developed by Mediaset Italy – MFE in collaboration with Fincons (Italy).

Grivet said: “Collaboration is in the DNA of this industry and a member-led consortium like HbbTV, and it is no surprise that members collaborate and join forces to deliver the most demanding and complex projects. I see great value in collaborative efforts in general; when two or more HbbTV members collaborate to develop an innovative solution based on HbbTV specifications, at the edge of the ecosystem and the technology… it creates easier and more predictable deployments for end-user services, with lower costs and reduced lead times for service providers.”

Fending off stiff competition from tivù’s la guida as well as the aforementioned Freely, the 2025 winner of the Best Use of HbbTV for Content Discovery category was another CCMA/3Cat solution: the AI Agent for HbbTV.

Speaking to the overall ecosystem in AI innovation that this solution grew up in, Grivet observed: “AI has for HbbTV the same fascinating effect it can have to all sorts of things; it enables things that appeared impossible a few years ago, and may seem magic; it remains to be seen, as in all AI-powered activities, if they hold to the promise as one can always fear that the complete lack of human intelligence may in the end not deliver what consumers expect (for instance in program recommendations).”

The HbbTV jury described the solution as a: “very innovative feature with impressive execution. It's a feature that many platforms and operators want to develop or are currently trying to roll out on IP-native apps and/or connected set-top boxes – great that it comes on HbbTV so fast!”

When it came to Best Tool or Product for HbbTV Service Development or Delivery, it was BCi Digital that reigned victorious for its Ocelot addressable advertising suite of products, including the Opportune schedule-aware ad decisioning service and Otter HbbTV application.

By combining broadcast and broadband delivery, BCi Digital’s Ocelot platform provides the tools to manage campaigns, make dynamic ad decisions, and orchestrate ad insertion in real time, helping TV services become more data-driven and commercially agile while maintaining broadcast reliability and compliance.

When distinguishing this solution, the jury stated: “[Ocelot is] a comprehensive and technically advanced suite that brings proven addressable advertising expertise to the HbbTV ecosystem with exceptional scalability and precision.”

Finally, the Judges’ Award for HbbTV Newcomer of the Year went to CCMA/ 3Cat for its “very strong accessibility features and an impressive integration of generative AI into the TV experience” that won two separate categories.

Signing off another successful HbbTV awards night, Grivet concluded: “This is a unique and highly valuable ‘connector’ to the ecosystem, and I personally greatly enjoy (and learn from) the review of the many submissions made every year.

“HbbTV members [that] develop innovative solutions based on HbbTV (and also DVB in this case) specifications… create an example of how to implement certain things, and this approach is very likely to be followed by other players; and the more the market aligns to harmonised implementations of things, the better it is.”

Vincent Grivet, Chairman of the HbbTV Association, recently revealed to IBC365 how a new digital rights management (DRM) specification will enable the reliable and secure delivery of premium content via HbbTV-based services, especially for applications approaching the complexity and content protection demands of video-on-demand (VOD) platforms. Discover more here.