From NBC using Whisper to promote ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ to E! launching an ‘Instagram Wall’ to track top celebrity accounts there were many major social TV stories this week.
Here are five that you may have missed:
– A YouGov poll found that 27% of TV viewers in the UK use social media while watching.
Takeaway: More studies appear to be concluding that while the majority of TV viewers are distracted, only between 20 and 30 percent of these viewers are using social media while watching. The most recent Deloitte Digital Democracy Survey, which tracked U.S. consumers, found that 22 percent of multitasking activities related to the shows being watched. Social TV companies have a lot of work to do to capture the attention of distracted viewers.
– Colin Hornett, Executive Producer of iPowow, distinguishes between social TV companies and participation TV companies in a piece for The Social Media Monthly: “We’re not social TV. It’s inherently social because you end up sharing things, but iPowow is Participation TV. This also isn’t a fad. Smart devices are only becoming more prevalent, so you need to be able to engage your audience and have them participate. 85% of people watching TV have some type of device in their hand, so why not give them something fun and engaging to do? This is really about engaging the fans in the story in the most entertaining, fun, simple way possible, and we’re having a blast doing it.”
Takeaway: We’ve written about participation TV companies like iPowow, Applicaster, and Wayin. As we just wrote above, it is becoming more difficult to capture the attention of TV audiences, but participation TV and connected TV app companies are finding innovative ways to help keep viewers engaged. Participation TV is particularly appealing to sports and award show content producers and advertisers.
– “Multichannel networks” (MCN) are in the news. Two months after Disney acquired Maker Studios, Time Warner was said to be looking to purchase Fullscreen. Fullscreen “says its 15,000-plus YouTube channels generate more than 3 billion monthly video views and reaches more than 300 million subscribers.”
Takeaway: Though Time Warner may ultimately decide not to purchase Fullscreen, there is a good chance that another company will. Large MCNs are in a prime position to cash out as more companies like Yahoo!, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are on original content spending sprees.
– AdAge’s “Media Guy” Simon Dumenco wrote a piece titled, “Social TV is Dead; Long Live Social TV.” His three main points: “The early goldrush days are over,” “social TV needs new champions,” and “social TV is a lot broader than we realize.”
Takeaway: For those in the social TV space, Dumenco’s piece is well worth the read, and we agree with his conclusion:
It’s just incumbent upon Tumblr and Twitter and Facebook and Beamly and TVtag and Viggle and everyone else in the social-TV space to refocus the conversation among networks and brands beyond a strict obsession with cause and effect — as in social messaging immediately prompting tune-in. (Pre-internet, nobody ever put that kind of pressure on the literal water cooler.)
The emperor is wearing clothes — it’s just that his tailors need a new marketing campaign.
– Wired is running a sponsored post from Netflix titled, “TV Got Better: Difficult men and brilliant women turning popular culture into culture.” The piece talks about the myriad ways that TV consumption habits are changing, and as you can guess, it discusses how “Netflix evolved fevrishly to aid and abet the new TV.”
Takeaway: This is an example of good native advertising, and despite being sponsored by Netflix, the author makes solid, hard-to-argue-with points about binge-watching and how TV has changed for the better.