As I write this, I am watching season 4 of Archer back to back while simultaneously Tweeting on my iPhone, so it’s all the more apt that this post is about the rise of social TV and second screen.
Last night I ventured down to the NYC headquarters of social marketing platform Offerpop for a panel discussion on the Rise of Social TV, featuring expert panelists from Logo TV, HuffPost Live and Lost Remote, and an introduction from Offerpop themselves.
To give some context, to this observer the rise of social TV has been a quiet and organic ascent led by consumers, which social marketers and broadcasters are leveraging reactively and not proactively. In other words, social TV seems to be a bit of a happy mistake: consumers were already using second screens to tweet about Game of Thrones and the Real Housewives before they were told to, and now it’s up to brands and broadcast channels to leverage that phenomenon.
A happy mistake maybe, but the era of social TV is very much with us: there was almost 5x* more social conversation around TV in 2012 than the previous year, and 62%** of Americans browse social media sites while watching TV; while 25%** actively discuss the programme that they are watching on social media.
In 2012 Americans spent as much time consuming media online as they did via their television sets, and in 2013 digital media is set to overtake TV. So you could forgive the television industry for panicking, just as record labels did in the Napster era, and you could forgive brands for re-allocating TV ad budgets. But happily, and unlike record labels circa 2000, it seems that brands and broadcast channels alike are quickly adapting to recognise the era of social TV as an opportunity. 50%* of the 2012 Super Bowl adverts incorporated hashtags into their messaging. HuffPost Live (not strictly traditional TV, but still relevant) encourage consumers to become ‘On-Air Guests’ by integrating their pre-recorded, and sometimes real-time, webcam feeds into programming. Meanwhile, Logo TV presenters broadcast social calls to action and use their personal social accounts to amplify the Logo message. Television is adapting.
Social TV is here, and this begs the question: which screen truly is the second screen? Perhaps this will shortly be a redundant term – as surely if you can attach a keyboard to a tablet, and if my MacBook Air is lighter than my mobile phone: everything is simultaneously mobile AND desktop. And if the majority of people are online or on a mobile device while they watch TV: the lines between first and second screen are blurred. To borrow a concept from Natan Edelsburg, who in turn borrowed it from USA Network, we are entering into an era of screen unification. USA Network coined the term in May when they announced plans to offer the same programming and social/gamification functionality across all devices from TV to web to mobile, effectively redefining how we consume television media. USA Network will be the first of many broadcasters to do this.
So buckle in because TV is about to get a lot more interesting, if only we had the time to watch it – but alas, someone needs to be moderating should Google buy the rights to broadcast the NFL on YouTube!
Thanks to:
*Offerpop, the Rise of Social TV
** http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-amplifies-tv-advertising-2013-8
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