A Lot of People Are Gathered Around The Digital Water Cooler Talking About TV Shows. Here's Why It Matters
Within the broadcast and social-media-analytics worlds, as well as the broadcast-obsessed precincts of the agency and marketer universe, the term "social TV" is uttered and heard endlessly these days. But two recent conversations I had with high-level media executives -- one in the glossy print world, and one in a digital business not directly connected to broadcast -- reminded me that not everyone understands the term of art.
Both execs basically asked me,
"What do you mean, exactly, when you say 'social TV'?"
The short answer:
Millions of people are now partaking of the "dual-screen" experience -- watching TV while using a smartphone (or tablet) to share (primarily on Twitter and Facebook) their thoughts about what they're viewing and to "check in" to shows (on services like GetGlue and Viggle). The result: a massive and rapidly expanding real-time focus group (and promotional force).
So a lot of people are gathered around the digital water cooler talking about TV shows. What's the big deal? Some of the hype is overblown, sure, but there are a bunch of very good reasons why social TV actually matters. For starters:
Social TV can increase ratings
At the Social TV Summit in San Francisco a couple weeks back, Deirdre Bannon, VP-media analytics at Nielsen, shared the result of research the company has been conducting during the past year. (It began releasing research on the social-TV-to-ratings connection last October and continues to cross-reference live data.) The main takeaway: For key demos, social buzz surrounding shows can goose ratings -- a bit. Below is the video recording of the live video stream during the keynote speech during the Social TV Summit in San Francisco.
For instance, Nielsen says a 9% to 14% increase in buzz volume (depending on where a particular show is in its season) correlates to a 1% increase in ratings in the 18-to-34 demo. That's obviously not enough to make or break a show, but it's enough to matter. It's also worth noting that ratings seem to be most susceptible to social influence when it comes to season premieres and finales -- i.e., the pivot points that are heavily marketed in traditional, nonsocial media (especially network promos).
Social TV can make TV better
Chris Stephenson is both a hard-charging new-media executive as president of Viggle -- the "loyalty program for TV" that launched in January -- and a pop-culture addict who takes naked delight in making what's fun TV even ... funner. Stephenson told me over coffee in San Francisco,
"People talk a lot about 'social TV,' but we don't think that way at Viggle. We think more about 'better TV.' We want to add a layer of enjoyment to television-watching which enhances the experience and rewards people for their loyalty and engagement. While many of the social-TV apps rely on the basic principle of 'sharing my check-ins,' we think about deep engagement, polls, trivia, mood-o-meters, etc."
Truth is, he was preaching to the converted. I confessed to Stephenson that on Oscar night in February I happened to be stuck in a Boston hotel room (on the eve of yet another social-TV conference, Hill Holliday's excellent TV Next Summit) and I watched -- and enjoyed -- the whole damn show, thanks to Viggle.
After checking into the Oscars on Viggle's iPhone app, I was served a steady stream of trivia questions (in a Viggle Live engagement sponsored by Bing that actually got me to use Bing for the first time on my phone) and got to vote on who I thought would win what. I felt a stupid amount of pleasure when I guessed correctly and earned bonus points. (Viggle points can be redeemed for gift cards from the likes of Starbucks and Best Buy.) And I even felt oddly validated when I guessed wrong -- if Viggle's poll results told me that most other Vigglers got it wrong, too. I really can't imagine having watched the entire Oscar telecast if Viggle Live hadn't added an extra layer of entertainment value to keep me glued to the screen across the room and to the one in my hand.
Social TV can get consumers to engage with shows (and brands) far beyond the broadcast window
USA Network senior VP-Digital Jesse Redniss, speaking of the various social-TV programs he and his team have devised over the past few years said.
"We provide custom metrics depending on what our sponsors are looking for. Nobody is really saying, 'We want to get clicks.' Nobody cares about the click anymore; the click is pretty much dead. Marketers really want engagement over time: 'People viewed our vehicle for X amount of time.' Or, 'We want people to experience all the cool attributes of what our brand represents.'"
In the case of its hit show "Burn Notice," for instance, USA Network produced two "seasons" of the "Burn Notice: A New Day" digital graphic novel (aka tablet comic book), sponsored by Hyundai, whose vehicles are featured in beautifully drawn, interactive storylines that have baked-in Twitter and Facebook connections. Fans of "Burn Notice" might watch every episode -- hardcore fans might even watch reruns, too, to catch nuances they missed on first viewing. But that's about it. Through TV alone, USA and its sponsors have a hold on viewer attention for a finite set of hour-long chunks for its dramas. But done right, social-TV initiatives like the "Burn Notice" comic book can strengthen engagement by deepening the narrative pre- and post-broadcast.
Social TV can provide tons of new 'hooks' for marketers
Earlier this month in his company's light-filled loft headquarters in SoMa (San Francisco's semi-sketchy/semi-hip South of Market neighborhood), Watchwith CEO and co-founder Zane Vella showed me the system his company has developed to provide what he calls a "time-based metadata" platform to power social-TV apps.
He said, sounding every bit the on-pitch evangelist.
"We're creating a world where every frame of TV is rich in possibilities."
But the proof is in the pop-ups -- the visual manifestation in Watchwith's back end (not visible to viewers) that creates second-by-second data bubbles that display what the database "knows" about every given scene. In an episode of social-TV (and ratings) hit "The Big Bang Theory," for instance, a character walks into a room and the Watchwith database serves up information (which in turn feeds into social-TV apps) about exactly which model of Jansport backpack he's carrying.
Consider that Watchwith -- which just rebranded from its nerdy previous incarnation, Related Content Database -- has been working with major broadcast and cable networks, social-TV startups and e-commerce players including eBay.
Now consider what can happen when such product-smart metadata gets synced with the crowdsourced data that more and more TV viewers are producing themselves during every scene of all their favorite shows. You can begin to understand where the whole social-TV phenomenon, and media engagement in general, is going.
COMMENTARY: A couple hundred execs gathered in San Francisco for the Social TV Summit, and LostRemote pulled together the following highlights from the event. Social TV technology is making a huge impact on how viewers experience their television programming, and can offer brands a powerful way to connect and engage with their viewers in real-time. You can glean information about Social TV technologies by viewing the highlight clips provided by Snappy.tv (well worth watching).
- One of the biggest reoccurring themes at social TV events is how early we are in the product development process, and how second screen experiences are something entirely new. Yahoo/IntoNow’s Adam Cahan summed up the social TV product challenge in a “post-PC world” this way: He said. “Television has been an incredible medium for brands to tell their story, but transferring that into a direct response environment or bringing that to a device is a fundamentally different proposition. It’s a very different set of consumer interactions.”
- Microsoft’s Pete Thompson shared that the new Sky TV application on Xbox Live — which offers up to 32 live channels for subscribers — features one of the first truly social TV experiences on Xbox. He explained. “You can be on Xbox Live and see where all your friends are watching TV, and their avatars pop up as you go through the program guide. You can join them and have your streams be connected at the same time, so you can be watching and talking and interacting at the same time.” Thompson said Xbox is also thinking about “reach clients” — second screen devices — and how to connect those to the Xbox Live experience, as well.
- AOL’s Janet Balis said they’re quickly ramping up for the launch of Huffington Post Streaming Network in Q2 of this year. She said, offering a little insight into the 12-hour-day streaming service. “We’re literally building studios. Imagine pulling reporters right off the newsroom floor… [and] bringing the audience into the dialogue, where normally comments and social activity happens on a page, suddenly those people have a place on the screen and are as vital as a source and contributor as the content itself.” She explained how HPSN (as it’s called) will balance a real-time social experience with a shareable on-demand experience — a big bet that “social can make great TV.”
- Surprising factoid from SocialGuide’s Sean Casey: “Our data shows that live sports events constitute somewhere between one and three percent of all TV programming, but about 50 percent of all social activity (around TV) is being driven by sports events.” Which includes regional sports events, too.
- Google’s Chee Chew (pictured) talked about “Google Hangouts on Air,” Google+’s ongoing effort to extend Hangouts to TV broadcasts and everyone else on YouTube, both live and on-demand. In other words, a live streaming service tied to YouTube, not just video chats. “The value that we bring with real-time and hangouts and that interaction is to transform what we think of as entertainment,” he said. “Our vision is for everyone on the planet to have access to On Air.” For more, Chee spoke with GigaOm after the event.
- TVGuide’s Christy Tanner revealed a new social TV survey, which we broke out as a separate story.
- Shazam’s David Jones announced the launch of a new “lightning fast” version of the app. He explained. “Literally in as little as one second we can match the content you’re hearing.” We gave the new app a try and it’s about twice as fast as the old version: some content took 5 seconds to “listen” and identify, others as quickly as a second. This goes a long way to address our earlier concerns about Shazam for TV: that whipping out the app to tag a :30 second commercial is quite the challenge. The new app carves a few precious seconds off the task.
- ConnecTV’s Ian Aaron shared some engagement metrics from the second-screen app’s first couple months in the wild: 42% of users have liked something, 31% have invited people, 28% participated in polls, 37% have chatted and another 39% go back in the timeline to see something they missed. Aaron says they’ve surpassed the 1 million check-in mark, and a TV promotion campaign (both in local markets and nationally) is poised to roll out soon.
- TV Plus’ AJ Shaw had an interesting pitch for his second-screen platform product. “The important thing to do is to learn and understand what types of engagement work for different content experiences,” he said, positioning TVPlus as “a platform to make it cheap and easy” for content creators to experiment quickly in the early-stage social TV industry. Great advice, regardless of platform.
If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend that you read my previous blog posts about social TV including those dated January 11, 2012, January 12, 2012, November 29, 2011, November 1, 2011, October 29, 2011, October 15, 2011, July 23, 2011, and October 27, 2010
Courtesy of an article dated April 13, 2012 appearing in AdAge Media News and an article dated April 4, 2012 appearing in LostRemote -- The Home of Social TV
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