A who’s who of social TV was on stage at this morning’s Business Insider Digital conference, as AllThings D senior editor Peter Kafka moderated a panel featuring Facebook VP for Media Partnerships Justin Osofsky, Shazam CEO Rich Riley, and SocialGuide CEO Andrew Somosi about current social TV trends.
Here are the takeaways:
Facebook’s emerging social TV presence
“It’s not just about TV, it’s about the world around you,” Osofsky said about real-time social commenting, suggesting that second screen conversations aren’t only about converting social comments into TV viewers, but about “extending the conversation.”
Osofsky also spoke about Facebook’s growing investment in social TV, and what it means for their TV network partners.
“In talking with partners, they want the content to be consumed by an audience, and that’s what we’re driving at scale,” the Facebook executive said. “We’re in the early stages of measurement, but I think we will prove that the conversation does drive real-time tune-in.”
He adds Facebook and social TV are now a mainstream activity:
“When 9 million people are talking about the Video Music Awards on Facebook and 10 million people are watching, you have a mainstream activity.”
Traditional advertising 2.0
More big name advertisers are going beyond the confines of traditional TV commercials, looking to get their message beyond a :30 second commercial.
“One of the things we’ve been doing is partnering with advertisers who run ads on TV,” Shazam CEO Rich Riley—who spoke with us in May— said, detailing how his company is giving TV advertisers an opportunity to expand their reach.
For example, Shazam ran a campaign for Jaguar in which the car company placed a “Shazamable” logo on their F-Type commercial, allowing viewers to receive digital links and interior views right to their smartphones.
Does a Twitter conversation turn into TV viewers?
32 million people tweeted around live events in 2012, according to SocialGuide, a Nielsen company that partnered with Twitter last year to provide ratings for TV conversations on Twitter.
But according to SocialGuide’s CEO, the real question is whether that Twitter conversation turns into TV viewership.
“The big question is does being on second screen get people to tune into the show in real time, or the following week.”
As social ratings measurements continue to evolve, we might soon begin to get an answer.