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How Social TV Will Save Traditional TV
08 Aug 2011 Posted by Brian Spencer
Your TV set and your social profile are about to merge.
Adweek reported that social TV will change the way we watch TV and the way we connect with friends. With a click on the remote, your TV will share what you are watching with your Facebook friends. You’ll also see an on-screen listing of what they are watching. Discussions will take place on the TV screen so that you can laugh, cry, rate, and review programs in real time.
Consumers are already making a habit of sharing their media habits online. Social TV will just make it easier.
Here are the benefits for advertisers and networks:
Higher product integration value
Conversation leads to greater engagement. If I’m engaged in a program, then I’m less likely to miss details. Product integration becomes more valuable as friends discuss the outfits, the cars, and the music in the program.
Less channel surfing
Social TV makes it painful to change the channel if my friends are watching the same show. This returns value back to traditional commercial pods. It also gives networks an incentive to create buzz-worthy programs to keep friends watching together.
Less time-shifting
The DVR takes a back seat during real-time viewing. With social TV, any ordinary program can become a must-see appointment. If it becomes a habit with my friends to solve the murder together during CSI: Miami, then I will miss-out if I’m not watching in real time. This makes the DVR less of a threat to commercial ratings.
More brand chatter
The conversation doesn’t stop during commercial breaks. Expect users to comment and review every spot the same way that Super Bowl parties produce chatter about commercials. Marketers have an opportunity to identify brand enthusiasts and extend the conversation.
The next few years will see dozens of technology platforms fight to bring social TV into the mainstream. Marketers should be prepared to put their best foot forward during programs with lots of buzz, and nurture the brand conversations that social TV will produce.
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Don’t Miss TV’s Other Super Bowls
18 Feb 2011 Posted by Brian Spencer
The TV industry gives marketers more than one Super Bowl per year. We’re often blind to these opportunities because they don’t receive the same fanfare as the NFL.
For example, February is the biggest blind spot for sports fans, as you can see in this chart from a previous post. But in the world of motorsports, February is Super Bowl season. Every February the best drivers show up for the richest and most prestigious NASCAR race, the Daytona 500.
Check out these stats from the top 10 markets for the Daytona 500:
2011 The Nielsen Company
The numbers look even better when you consider viewership by specific audience segments. For example, among men in Charlotte who can change the oil in their own car, the Daytona 500 has 80% of the reach of the Super Bowl (Scarborough research). If you’re a brand selling automotive parts, then this means you can have a big impact, with less waste, to a targeted audience.
Many other TV events attract huge shares of specific demos or geographies: award shows, season finales, tournaments, playoffs, and more. Do some digging to discover which events resonate with your shoppers.
Nothing beats the Super Bowl for total national reach. But for certain markets and demos, you can have a modest budget reach a large percent of your shoppers.
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Live TV Events and Social Media Make Good Partners
14 Apr 2010 Posted by Brian Spencer
Viewership ratings of live TV events, including award shows, are experiencing a resurgence after several years of precipitous declines and rumors of broadcast TV’s imminent demise. Aided by social media (e.g., Twitter trending topics and Facebook status updates), live TV events have experienced significant ratings increases during the last year. A recent article in Ad Age offers several specific examples:
• MTV’s Movie Awards in May of 2009: online “buzz” about “Bruno” and “New Moon” fed interest in the event, which racked up 5 million viewers. In addition, traffic to MTV’s microsite surged by 205% over 2008
• The BET Awards in June of 2009: this event was the highest rated celebrity telecast for all of 2009 thanks to a BET Twitter account (which had more than 40,000 followers) and a tribute to Michael Jackson. More than 10.45 million viewers watched it live. BET also paid unusual attention to its Twitter participants by hosting a “Wall of Tweets” which showed Twitter updates during the live show. Traffic to the BET website grew by 100% over 2008.
• MTV Video Music Awards in September of 2009: Thanks to Twitter, Kanye West’s inappropriate interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech prompted a surge in viewership for the remaining two hours of the broadcast.
• The Grammy Awards in January 2010: The increase in viewership spiked by 35% over last year, bringing total viewership to nearly 26 million. Ad Age attributes this positive trend to a “high volume of real-time tweets and a decent amount of pre-show buzz.”
To be fair, not everyone is convinced that social media should be credited with the resurgence. Brad Adgate, a Horizon Media research analyst, offers this alternate explanation, “Last year was record-low viewing for most awards shows, so there had to be some sort of bounce-back. Having windows of insight from regular consumers’ opinion has its place, though I don’t think that would necessarily fuel ratings. The truth is these shows have gotten more entertaining.”
Regardless, Nielsen is developing a way to analyze the impact of social media on TV viewership, in real-time. Soon, programmers will be able to correlate surges in online buzz to specific moments in a live show.
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