Who says there’s no money in social TV? TVGuide.com says it’s grossing millions of dollars ad sales across its many social TV products: Watchlists (earlier story), TV Check-ins, Social Power Ranking (story), Watch & Share, and now a new sponsored home page experience called Social Spotlight:
The new home page module highlights the ION Television show, Flashpoint, and as you can see, it goes far beyond a standard display ad with an embedded promotional video, a native “like” button for ION Television’s Facebook page, a “add to Watchlist” button, a “I’ll Watch” button that triggers social sharing, a few news stories associated with the show and a call-out to use the #Flashpoint hashtag. Whew!
In fact, this is the most “social” of any online ad I’ve ever seen.
“Both users and advertisers have embraced social TV on our site, and we’re happy to share the milestone of our 50th social sponsorship this year with ION,” said Christy Tanner, Executive Vice President and General Manager, TV Guide Digital. “We found a growing curiosity in social ad integrations among customers last year, so we built our social ad innovations ahead of the curve to meet the demand we saw coming. Marketers want to extend the value of their advertising dollars by connecting and engaging with TVGuide.com’s audience of social influencers.”
While many companies are building social TV products like crazy, TVGuide is monetizing them at a surprising scale, attractors programmers and marketers who are eager to drive social buzz for their shows by engaging social influencers who love to talk about TV.