The below post is part of our 2014 Social TV Year-in-Review guest post series and is written by Telescope CEO Jason George.
Live is Life: The Shifting Sands of Social TV
2014 has been a “growing up” year in Social TV – with Facebook increasing their focus in the space, Twitter’s position as the de facto platform of choice for television has been challenged, further alerting content creators (as well as advertisers) to the growing importance of this piece of the social media ecosystem. It’s not just Twitter – the likes of Instagram, Google, Tumblr, and Snapchat are also lurking around the corner, deftly positioning for their share of the $100bn worth of advertising money that is pumped into TV on an annual basis.
Common points of reference – such as the Nielsen Twitter rating – are both working to legitimize and standardize how we measure success, and ultimately, return on investment. The fact that Twitter users skew heavily towards the valuable younger demographic is something that isn’t lost on network ad sales teams and their clients: the advertisers. For a show like “Dancing With The Stars,” which regularly won its night this past season in the Nielsen Twitter ratings, activating digital and social engagement now has a currency it can draw on and utilize to attract new sponsors.
As with all new currencies, adoption takes time, and l hear less and less network executives question whether this is a valuable strategy (hands up who hasn’t been asked “but can you prove it helps ratings?”). Any content creator worth their salt now recognizes the threat as well as the opportunity presented by the rapid evolution of technology and audience behavior, and therefore takes steps to meet this challenge – they simply can’t afford not to. That’s one of the reasons we’ve seen Social TV move out of v1.0 (tweets to air) this year and into more sophisticated use cases, such as the American Idol Fan Wall.
Those content creators are also becoming more comfortable with giving increasing amounts of control to their audience. Award shows, such as the AMA’s, have a real-time live vote for one of their categories, and the Instant Save campaign on NBC’s “The Voice” has been a resounding success –#Voicesave helps drive almost eight times the normal amount of Twitter traffic for the show, demonstrating the power of this type of campaign when it’s executed well.
The days of producers dictating the flow of content to their audience are gone forever. The successful networks of the future will be those who understand that a big part of their role will be to create a framework that allows their fans to feedback, comment, and control – all in real-time and directly into the broadcast stream.
So, we see that audiences are clamoring for increased control, and respond positively when producers grant it to them. What about the other important players in this ecosystem: the networks? We’re seeing the beginning of a seismic shift – networks are changing the way they program their schedules, and moving increasingly towards live content. Sports are the obvious example, but we’re also seeing a scramble to acquire other event content, such as awards shows and reality competition programming. NBC has been the most forceful, commissioning live musicals – “Sound of Music” and “Peter Pan,” being the most recent – and building social buzz to drive tune-in and participation via social media. In May 2015, they’re bringing Red Nose Day, a live comedy-fueled charity telethon, to the network. These live television events allow networks to package social engagement and audience interactivity alongside the broadcast, creating an experience that can’t be replicated on viewers’ DVR’s.
Though everyone knows there’s a paradigm shift in how advertisers spend their marketing dollars, nothing can match the power of TV to reach mass-scale audiences and create compelling narratives that brands can tap into. Networks are doubling-down on this strategy by increasingly “eventizing” their programming in order to engage their audiences in real-time participation experiences and drive live scheduled viewing. Because of this, expect Social TV to play an increasingly important role in 2015.