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B4 | Tuesday, January 8, 2013 THEWALL STREET JOURNAL.

Special Advertising SectionSpecial Advertising Section

By Eric Schoeniger

Consumer eleCtroniCs

I l l u s t r a t i o n b y A l e x Wi l l i am s o n

When 166 million fans sit down to watch Super Bowl XLVII on February 3, no small number of them will settle in with at least oneother screen. While they watch the game on television, they’ll turn to their smartphones, tablets and laptops to access playerstats, learn about products they see advertised, communicate with other fans and otherwise enhance their viewing experience.

Welcome to the era of the secondscreen, in which TV viewers now rou-tinely augment the main screen withcontent from a second or even thirddevice.

“The second screen is moving con-sumers toward an experience in whichthey can access the content they want,when they want, where they want, onwhatever device they want, all seam-lessly,” says Praveen Atreya, direc-tor of the LTE Innovation Center atVerizonWireless.

sCreens risingAmericans spend at least 34 hours a

week in front of a TV set, according toNielsen. Most of the TV content theyview is delivered through a traditionalbroadcast, cable, satellite or telco con-nection, though a growing amountflows over the Internet.

But increasingly, TV viewers simul-taneously access a second device. Infact, 39 percent now use their smart-phone or tablet at least once a daywhilewatching TV, Nielsen says, and 85 per-cent do so at least once a month. One-third of those age 25 to 64 check sportsscores on smartphones. Forty-four per-cent age 55 to 64 dive deeper into theshow they’re watching. Half of smart-phone users age 25 to 34 visit social-networking sites.

The Consumer Electronics Associat-ion (CEA) has tracked similar trends. Itreports that two-thirds of viewers multi-task with another device while watchingtelevision. Among 18- to 34-year-olds,themost common activities include vis-itingwebsites (44 percent) and using so-cial media (43 percent).

“For years now our research hasshown that consumers have pulled ina second screen for big sporting eventsand live events such as the GRAMMYAwards,” says Steve Koenig, CEA’s di-rector of industry analysis. “But thesecond screen is now becoming itsown experience.”

the enablersThree fundamentals are enabling

the second screen. First is simply thatmore consumers have mobile devices.Smartphone penetration is greater than50 percent according to Nielsen, andnearly one-fifth of U.S. homes own atablet. “Those devices are crossing age,gender and ethnic lines,” says DouniaTurrill, Nielsen’s cross-platform prac-tice lead. For example, 60 percentof Hispanics, 62 percent of AfricanAmericans and 70 percent of AsianAmericans own smartphones.

Second, high-speed connectivity isincreasingly available and affordable.“Technologies such as 3G and 4G LTEare removing barriers to high-band-width communication,” Atreya says.“There are now more than 11 millionusers of LTE, representing 35 percentof the data we handle. And most of thatdata is now video.”

Bandwidth barriers will continue tofall. At the Consumer Electronics Showthis month, for example, Verizon plansto unveil LTE advancements that willenable an even higher-quality “broad-cast-type” experience, Atreya reports.“LTE will make the leap from smart-phones and tablets to things like secu-rity, healthcare and even appliances,”he says.

Finally, apps, socialmedia and cloudcomputing are giving consumers ac-cess to a richer set of content, capabili-ties and experience. They can instantlyread articles, watch videos, play games,store and retrieve data, and interactwith others —all in the context of theirTV viewing.

let’s get soCialIn fact, the second screen has

spawned a parallel phenomenon: “so-cial TV.” TV viewers increasingly sharetheir experience with others throughsocial media.

“Many people engage in social TVthrough established networks such asTwitter and Facebook,” says ShawndraHill, director of the Social TV Lab at theUniversity of Pennsylvania WhartonSchool. “They also increasingly useTV-specific social networks.” These in-clude sites and apps such as GetGlue,Miso and Zeebox, where viewers can“check in,” follow shows, access relat-ed content, win rewards and interactwith others.

Similarly, apps like Shazam for TV,Viggle and IntoNow use audio recogni-tion to let users identify shows, accessexclusive content, buy merchandise,earn points toward items such asmovietickets andgift cards, and share content.

Social-media sites like Mashablerank shows that generate the mostso-cial networking. Recent shows with so-cial buzz include The Vampire Diarieson the CWand SpongeBob SquarePantson Nickelodeon.

TV shows, for their part, are encour-aging social-media interaction. Theypromote Twitter hashtags on their web-sites. They feature Tweets from castmembers or contestants. They broad-cast “news crawls” of viewer comments.Competition and reality shows allow

viewers to vote on contestants. Showslike last year’sThe Glass House even al-low viewers to select what contestantswear and eat. “Our research indicatesthat when shows invest in these trig-gers, it leads to greater viewer engage-ment,” Hill says.

From Jumbotron to “miCrotron”Sports fans were among the first to

embrace the second screen. The NBA,NFL, MLB, NHL and NASCAR all offerapps to support a second-screen expe-rience, as do sports networks such asESPN and NESN.

A viewer watching a recent Celtics-Mavericks game, for instance, couldlaunch the NBA Gametime app to seea virtual basketball court that displayedplayer stats along with real-time gameupdates, including scores, a shot chart,scoring zones and other data. Relatedheadlines, Tweets, video clips and oth-er content were just a click or two away.

And it’s hardly a U.S. phenomenon.From the Formula 1 Grand Prix tothe Olympics, major sporting eventsaround the world indulge users of thesecond screen.

International fans have no dearth ofcontent to choose from. Robust web-sites, apps and video games are avail-able from sports networks, leagues,teams and entertainment companies.

An example is the Giro d’Italia bikerace, an annual 21-stage event heldprimarily in Italy. When three stagespassed through Denmark in 2012,the country’s TV2 network providedviewers with a second-screen expe-rience that included rider stats andbios, stage reviews, weather data, routemaps, a multimedia timeline, integra-tion with social media, and interactivefeatures such as viewer photo andvideo uploads.

monetizing eyeballsAs viewers shift their attention to

the second screen, advertisers are fol-lowing. For example, one simple wayto capitalize on social TV is to includea social-media symbol in advertis-ing. Nearly two-thirds of viewers recallseeing a Facebook, Twitter or similarsymbol in TV ads, and one-third have“interacted” with them, according to aMarch 2012 Accenture survey.

The link to social media may be pay-ing off. “We found that during last year’sSuper Bowl, advertisers that includ-ed social-media content in their adstended to generate more Tweets andhad more sustained engagement withthe brand throughout the broadcast,”

Hill says.And there are other strategies. Some

advertisers reward viewers for watch-ing commercials or second-screenads with coupons or relevant content.The reward can lead directly to an op-portunity to purchase. Others offersecond-screen games that can engageor educate viewers, or lead to rewardssuch as giveaways.

TV shows, for their part, are offeringsponsored second-screen extras. TheX Factor, for example, offers the XtraFactor App presented by Verizon. Theapp lets fans read news, learn aboutcontestants, watch videos and interactthrough social media.

Increasingly, advertisers will seekcloser integration between ads on thefirst and second screens. “Let’s sayyou’re watching a show, and there’san ad for a soft drink,” Koenig says. “Arelated offer might simultaneously ap-pear on the show’s app.”

Networks may also try to integratesponsors into the first- and second-screen experience. “So if you’re watch-ing a show and the characters arewearing clothes by a particular design-er, youmight chose to go to that secondscreen to learn more about the productto purchase it,” Turrill says.

seCond liFeGoing forward, networks, advertis-

ers and other innovators will experi-ment with new ways of enhancing thesecond screen.

“Audio watermarking,” for example,could allow networks to transmit animperceptible tone to trigger second-screen content during a broadcast. “Ifyou’re watching a documentary onbirds, as each species is introduced,the audio watermark would pull upadditional information on the secondscreen,” Koenig explains.

“The next-generation TV paradigmwill be one that lets you access chan-nels and on-demand content leveragingthe consumer electronics you alreadyhave — and give you an immersive vid-eo experience anywhere in the house,”says Atreya.

“Consumers for a long time havebeen demanding a congruent experi-ence across platforms,” Koenig adds.“The linesbetweenwhat’s TVandwhat’snot TV are blurring. It’s less about thedevices andmore about the content.”

Eric Schoeniger is a Philadelphia-basedfreelance writer specializing in business,information technology, life sciencesand clean energy.

Employee-OwnedDevices in theWorkplaceThe Second Screen

Smartphones, tablets and other devicesare now integral to watching television Goes Mainstream

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