Social TV: The Opportunity for Brands

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Social TV, the potential for brandsDirectors Briefing October 2011

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02 / SOCIAL TV, THE POTENTIAL FOR BRANDS

Social TV, the potential for brands

Contents

Introduction 03 What is Social TV Why is it Important? Social TV Research 04Three Different Ways Consumers are Using Social TV 05Social TV Apps Focus On: Social TV Apps 06Connected TVs 07Watching TV content on a computer, laptop or tablet 08Social TV the opportunity for brands 09How Can Brands Harness Social TV A well placed tweet Badge Promotions Apps on the Television Apps to Interact with TV events Bespoke Campaigns The Future of Social TV 10

03/ SOCIAL TV, THE POTENTIAL FOR BRANDS


Introduction

Watching TV has always been social. A crowd watches the big match in the pub, friends get together to watch a special programme or we talk about last night’s TV at the water cooler.

When the Internet took off, the amount of time spent watching TV decreased. In ‘those days’ (about 15 years ago) the Internet was accessed by a slow connection on a large computer in the other room. Now the Internet is accessed quickly on a wide variety of devices.

An increasing global trend is the rise of parallel media consumption on the TV and on a ‘second screen’. Usually a mobile device or tablet but not exclusively.

Much of this second screen activity has been related to the discussing the TV programme on social channels including Facebook and Twitter. In the UK, A series of Political ‘Leaders’ Debates for the 2010 General Election saw 29 tweets a second actively commenting on the live debate. The social activitiy surrounding the XFactor has lead to the US version allowing audience voting directly from Twitter and the development of integrated brand strategies to complement TV sponsorship deals.

John Lewis, a major UK retailer and benchmark for UK retail expects 80% of its large format TV sales to be connected TV’s this Christmas. A connected TV is a set that can access the Internet and offer lightweight apps including social networking functions.

Read more at

http://dtt.me/johnlewisTV

What is Social TV

Social TV is a term used to refer to the activity of socially connecting around the watching of a TV show. For the purpose of brand marketing, Social TV will refer to the connection made to join the active social networks with the ‘traditional’ broadcast of TV shows.

Why is it important?

Social TV will allow to brands to truly connect online, mobile and TV marketing solutions delivering an impact and engagement greater than the sum of its parts.

Globally recognized MIT placed Social TV as one of its top 10 trends for 2010 along with real time search and £D mobile.

http://www.technologyreview.com/tr10/?year=2010

We believe the launch in late 2011 of the Google TV updates will be the first major signal for the potential of Social TV in 2011.



What does the Research Say?

“American consumers are increasingly connected and our recent survey shows they are increasingly multitasking when it comes to multimedia.

Roughly 40 percent of tablet and smartphone owners in the U.S. used their devices daily while watching TV, while only 14 % of eReader owners said they watched TV while using their device every day.

And what are smartphone and tablet owners doing while watching TV? Checking email. Email was the top activity for both men and women during television programmeing and commercial breaks. In addition, women reported engaging in social networking more than men, while men checked sports scores more often.”

Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK, recently conducted a survey of 3,000 consumers and found that:

60% of people concurrently watch TV and go online at least two or three times a week.

37% go online while watching TV every day.

44% use social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, while watching TV.

37% have chatted online about TV content.

19% have shared TV content on a social network.

Our Mobile Planet, the data centre from Google, IPSOS and the MMA suggests that well over half of respondents use their smartphone whilst watching TV. Women across Europe are more active with social viewing than men.

www.ourmobileplanet.com

Neilson Net Ratings



3 different ways consumers are using Social TV 1. Watching TV, whilst engaging on a mobile device.

The consumer is watching their TV and engaging on social channels via mobile, laptop or tablet.

Social engagement will be through Twitter or Facebook, either commenting on wall updates or tweeting with relevant hashtags to highlight the conversation thread, e.g. #XFactor

A number of apps allow users to ‘check in’ and discuss their programmes connecting to the wider social networks. These apps are similar to foursquare offering an element of ‘gamification’ offering rewards for checking in and engaging. Brands are starting to use these methods as additional means of promotion.

Social TV AppsThese apps are becoming an increasing touchpoint for social TV engagement and a great potential for brands to join the Social TV ecosystem. Most of these apps start with basic checking in functions offering points or branded badges in reward. In 2012 these will evolve to more conversation-based engagement, moving away from the basic check in.

Additional data provided by www.crunchbase.com

Focus on Social TV Apps

Tunerfish is a startup focused on the virtuous cycle of sharing, discovery, and consumption of entertainment. Tunerfish is wholly-owned by Comcast, who acquired Plaxo in 2008

tunerfish.com

Miso is a 2nd screenexperience that makes watching TV more fun and social. It’s

available on the iPhone, iPad, Android, and Web. Miso is backed by Google Ventures.

Miso lets you check-in to your favourite shows and episodes to unlock fun, virtual badges, earn points, and compare with your friends to see who is the biggest fan! Connect Miso with Facebook and Twitter to automatically and instantly share what you’re watching with your friends. See what other Miso users

are watching and check-out the hottest trending shows. You can even edit episodes, media titles and posters, personalize your profile, and more to make your TV watching experience more you!

www.gomiso.com

GetGlue is a social network for entertainment that sparks real-

time conversation about music, movies, television shows, celebrities, books and topics people are passionate about. GetGlue also offers users personalized recommendations and exclusive rewards from some of the biggest names in entertainment.

GetGlue is at the heart of the rapidly accelerating “second screen” phenomenon, in which people increasingly choose to interact socially while consuming content. GetGlue

enables consumers to connect to one another and express themselves in real-time while watching or listening to the entertainment content they love.

www.getglue.com



2. Connected TV

A connected TV will allow the user to watch TV and connect socially at the same time. Many large screen TVs from major manufacturers including Sony and Samsung offer basic apps allowing consumers to engage socially on their television. Apple and Google are also in the living room with their Apple TV and Google TV respectively.

Sales of both companion boxes have been sluggish (Apple have sold just over 1 million in 2 years, Google has not reported sales but they haven’t been good.)

Apple TV allows the consumer to access streaming iTunes content from the cloud and act as a ‘big screen’ for iPhones and iPads.

Google TV sits between the cable/satellite box offering a suite of apps including Google products, Gmail and Youtube as well as branded apps [channels] including Net a Porter and NBA.

In November 2011 Google launched an operating system update allowing ‘traditional’ apps from the Android Market onto the TV.

This we believe will begin the tipping point for social TV uptake into 2012.





How Brands Can Harness Social TV A Well-Placed Tweet

Just watch the volume of #Xfactor tweets on a Sunday night to see how active the community is. A well-placed and relevant tweet could be a good starting point for harnessing the audience.

Badge Promotions

Social TV apps including Miso and GetGlue are active channels to deliver promotions. By offering branded badges for watching certain programmes, brands can create a wider promotion to include a simple reward, which in turn has a social value that can be shared.

GetGlue worked with HBO’s vampire series True Blood to boost engagement and to sell DVD’s and Merchandise.

Fans using GetGlue’s apps to check-in to the show will be able to get discounts at HBO’s

online store on a range of items, including DVDs, books and replica bullet necklaces. People who have earned the Truebie reward will get 15% off, while those with the Superfan reward will get 20% off. Meanwhile, one user - the ‘Guru’ - will get a $50 gift card from HBO.

Apps on the Television

Not strictly ‘Social TV’ but the opening of the Android Market onto Google TV will offer the potential for your app to be consumed in the living room as part of wider family engagement. We expect Apple to open Apple TV for iTunes apps in due course.

3. Watching TV content on a computer, laptop or tablet.

YouTube now screens TV catch up content from the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK. It is also pushing to stream more live events.

The connection of YouTube to Google plus will allow users to watch programmes in a hangout, creating a social ‘gathering’ centred around a show.

In the USA, Facebook users can watch streaming movies from Warner Brothers including the Dark Knight and Harry Potter. The extension to showing and sharing TV content is not too far away.

‘Social Listening’ – connecting Spotify into Facebook streams added one million users in less than a month. A strong indication we feel for the future power of social TV.

Social TV – the Opportunity for Brands

Brands have an opportunity to harness the Social TV opportunity if they can offer a benefit to the consumer.

Benefits could include:

• Full integration of mutli-channel brand campaigns• Social Uplift’ timing tweets to interact with TV ad schedules to enhance brand awareness or increased response • The ability to engage with a TV audience on small budgets • Harness one of the most important digital trends for 2012



Apps to interact with TV events

Heneiken Star Player

The game, which was created and devised by creative agency AKQA, taps into a growing ‘dual screen’ habit amongst audiences: the tendency to watch TV while also chatting with mates via social media networks on computers or mobile phones. StarPlayer works in real-time, with players invited to forecast the outcome of corners, free kicks and penalties by choosing between a number of options.

Different point scores are awarded depending on the likelihood of the outcome. Players also have the chance to guess when goals will take place - at the start of the game they are given eight chances to predict whether there will be a goal in the next 30 seconds, with points awarded on a sliding scale depending on how early the goal is anticipated.

Bespoke Campaigns

Major brands are using Social TV to connect their online, mobile and TV activities.

Pepsi says its Pepsi Pulse platform is a real-time digital visualisation of the conversations taking place on the social web around key Pepsi entertainment properties such as the show, giving consumers a forum to follow the ‘pulse’ of a certain topic or individual in real-time.

www.pepsipulse.com



The Future of Social TV

Many of our examples are ‘big brand’. This is because they are early adopters; they have the budget to trial this activity and are active in prime time TV sponsorship. We expect the ‘trickle down’ effect to happen quickly opening up a new market for wider brands through 2012.

From Check in to Conversation

The Check in model can be seen as just the starting point for social engagement. Miso is moving from a check-in service to a conversation place. CEO Somrat Niyogi suggests,

“Check-in is just a starting point“ he said, “a feature that can help to get a conversation going, but not be the focus of a conversation”GigaOM’s NewTeeVee

Get Glue has already seen the value of its conversation channels impacting wider social networks. Specifically, GetGlue has a measurable impact on Twitter. During primetime, 3% – 20% of tweets about shows are coming from GetGlue. During the Oscars, GetGlue was the third-most-mentioned account on Twitter and 1/12 of the tweets that mentioned the word “Oscars” in the first 30 minutes of the telecast originated from GetGlue. Other shows have experienced similar stats:

10% of tweets during Californication’s season finale came from GetGlue.

15% of tweets during a recent episode of A&E’s Breakout Kings came from GetGlue.

3% of tweets that mentioned ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ during a recent episode of NBC’s hit show came from GetGlue.

Read the full article on Forbes http://dtt.me/forbesGG

Would you like to discuss this?

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Technology

Social TV: The Opportunity for Brands