Social TV: How Marketers Can Reach and Engage Audiences by Connecting Television to the Web, Social Media, and Mobile

Is TV dead? Local Boston Authors Explore Future of Television

While many proclaim the death of television, the over 70-year-old medium is as healthy and alive as it has ever been. In fact, we are watching more television than ever before. According to Nielsen, the average American watches just over 35 hours of television per week, in spite of the rise in online and mobile video viewing.

Mobile and tablet devices allow us to watch and experience television whenever and wherever we want. And “connected TVs” blend web and television content into a unified big screen experience bringing us back into our living rooms.

Mike Proulx and Stacey Shepatin, SVP/Director of Social Media and SVP/Director of National Broadcast at renowned advertising agency Hill Holliday, have teamed up in their new book, SOCIAL TV: How Marketers Can Reach and Engage Audiences by Connecting Television to the Web, Social Media, and Mobile (ISBN: 978-1-1181-6746-5; Wiley; February 2012; Hardcover). They examine the complex television landscape by helping brands navigate new marketing and advertising opportunities.

Following the success of Hill Holliday's 2011 TVnext summit, Social TV will be featured at the agency's 2012 TVnext summit on February 27 http://tvnext.hhcc.com/. With over 25 industry thought leaders, TVnext 2012 is a can’t miss event that will explore television’s future in a format filled with case studies, demonstrations, rich debate, and insights. Speakers include executives from ABC, Bravo, NBC, USA Network, BET, Bluefin Labs, Nielsen, TV Guide Digital, SocialGuide, Trendrr, GetGlue, Miso, Visible World, Canoe Ventures, SecondScreen Networks, Microsoft/Xbox, Dijit, and Comcast/Xfinity.

Just as television is changing, so is its advertising. The blending of media channels has created new opportunities for marketers to reach and engage with target audiences. And this shifting television landscape is not just affecting advertising creative, but also how agencies plan and buy media.

Social TV addresses these changes and focuses on the following:

• Leveraging the “second screen” to drive synched and deeper brand engagement
• Using social rating analytic tools to find and target lean-forward audiences
• Aligning brand messaging to content as it travels across devices
• Determining the best strategy to approach marketing via connected TVs
• Employing addressable TV advertising to maximize content relevancy
• Testing and learning from the most cutting-edge emerging TV innovations

SOCIAL TV explores the following trends through TV consumption:

• Digital recording devices have allowed consumers to "time shift." At the end of 2010, 38% percent of all U.S. TV households had a DVR; however, those viewers are still watching commercials. Nielsen also found that in DVR homes, playback actually improves commercial ratings by 44% among 18-49s after three days.
• People are watching TV shows online. In Jan. 2011 143.9 million Americans viewed videos online (Source: Nielsen). Furthermore, eMarketer reports that a full third of U.S. adult Internet users watch full-length TV shows online.
• "Second screen" viewing via mobile devices is on the rise. Consumers are viewing more of their favorite shows from mobile devices, such as phones and tablets -- a habit that has increased 41% year-over-year. The majority users of mobile video are teens, clocking in more than seven hours a month on average.
• Multi-screen viewing is also on the rise. Per a recent Nielsen study, 70 percent of tablet owners and 68 percent of smartphone owners said they use their devices while watching television.  In another study from late 2010, 86% of mobile Internet users said they were using their devices while watching TV (Source: Nielsen/Yahoo). What are people doing while interacting with these devices during TV shows? Nielsen/Yahoo found that a third were using mobile apps, 37% were browsing the web, 40% were engaging via social networks and 56% were texting with a friend or family member.

How have companies been responding to these trends?

• Old Navy partnered with music tagging app Shazam to make their commercials more interactive.  Consumers who tag the commercial as it airs are driven to a custom experience where they can download music, learn more about the clothes, get coupons, and more.
• Wheat Thins thrust unexpected Twitter users (who happened to tweet about their product) into the starring role of their TV commercials. Their ad shows a Wheat Thins team delivering a truckload of crackers to this unsuspecting fan who mentioned they ran out of their product in a tweet.
• USA Network recently launched its Character Chatter app, which lets viewers talk to other fans and engage with content from several social channels while viewing the show.

TV consumption is on the rise, and consumers are viewing and experiencing TV in a vastly different way than they were 5 years ago.  TV viewership has radically transformed from a passive experience to a more engaged, interactive, and on-demand experience. Content producers will not only have to continue to create quality entertainment products, but they will need to consider ways to:

• Enhance the viewing experience
• Leverage social media to promote their properties
• Distribute their content across multiple platforms

SOCIAL TV is a one stop shop, giving readers the opportunity to understand this new convergence and discover opportunities they never knew existed.