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Carri Bugbee

YouTube superstars: the generation taking on TV - and winning | Tech | The Guardian - 0 views

  • There is growing consensus that traditional media, particularly TV, need to learn lessons from this. "YouTube is beginning to behave like a market leader," noted Elisabeth Murdoch in her 2012 MacTaggart lecture. "Believe at your own risk that their platform is based on homemade videos of cats in washing machines… Brands and talent are using YouTube to create direct-to-consumer relationships. Michelle Phan is the world's most popular make-up expert with over 600 million views. Yes – that's equivalent to a global Olympic audience generated by a 22-year-old putting on Lady Gaga makeup."
  • I'm a professional. If you expect me to jump at the opportunity to do something for free, like you're doing me a solid? No." Perhaps the scariest part of that comment for the old media is that these twenty-somethings know Jamie Oliver best for his supermarket advertising.
  • Cable television offers hundreds of channels, while YouTube gives us potentially millions from a global pool. The second is that technology now provides more versatility for watching content from the internet. For copying the tips from a make-up video, you might choose to use a smartphone in the bathroom; you can watch vlogs in bed on a tablet; for longer, more stylised productions, you've still got the big screen.
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  • "If TV is a monologue then YouTube is a conversation," says Benjamin Cook. "The communal side of TV has been outdated for 10 years. Something like Doctor Who, The X Factor or the Olympics will suddenly get everyone crowded round the TV again, but in general TV just feels more distant to me. I will sit in bed and watch Charlie McDonnell's latest vlog and you feel far closer – like you're watching a friend."
  • at the end of 2010 when the site introduced TrueView, a system that allowed users to skip almost two-thirds of its adverts easily; the innovation being that Google could now charge much more for the ones people did watch to the end
  • "One thing that's completely different is that a lot of creators involve their audience in the creative process," says Sara Mormino, director of YouTube content operations in Europe. "So they ask the audience questions, they ask them to comment and they are also able to look at the stats of exactly who is watching.
  • Feedback is immediate and unfailingly honest, and they tailor their performances every time they post a video. Such an environment has given rise to rabid fandom.
  • When you speak to the YouTubers, it's hard not to think that old-style broadcasters should be concerned by the lack of interest in and sometimes disdain for their product. What this generation (and their audience) loves about the platform is that they grew up with it; it feels like it belongs to them. They make the videos, unmediated by grown-ups, and put them out into the world where they are judged by their peer group.
  • n January 2012, Elisabeth Murdoch's production company, Shine, bought ChannelFlip, a media agency that represents some popular YouTubers, and is expanding rapidly
Carri Bugbee

Second coming: the evolution of the companion screen » Digital TV Europe - 0 views

  • The huge growth of both the smartphone and tablet markets in recent years has brought with it a profound shift in viewing habits. According to recent Nielsen stats, 84% of US smartphone and tablet owners now say they use their devices as second screens while watching TV – looking up information about programmes they are watching, researching or buying goods and interacting with friends.
  • Recent months have seen the consolidation, and even closure, of some of the first crop of dedicated second screen services.
  • McDonnell claims that industry, and industry watchers, have been distracted by the buzz around so-called ‘second screening’ – “misinterpreting the audience behaviour and missing the point that it’s just all about making the TV show better.” He claims that part of this “distraction” has rested with the consumer-facing startups, eager to grab attention from broadcasters and monetise this space independently. “They’ve generated a lot of hype and have largely failed to capitalise on it,” says McDonnell.
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  • While Zeebox may have initially been focused on live, second-screen participation, Rose says that the service is now more focused on the social experience around the TV shows themselves. A recent major update to the app added MyTV, a personalised content feed based on the shows a user follows, with targeted recommendations, fan-community TV rooms and aggregated articles, news, and information. Zeebox is now even syndicating its production tools, synchronised show enhancements and TV chat rooms to its broadcast partners – including Fox, Discovery, NBC and Viacom.
  • likely part of the appeal for Shazam when it comes to TV is the possibility of tapping into the massive pre-existing broadcast ad market, offering multiscreen and interactive extensions for campaigns.
  • “Having one app that is able to do slightly different things for shows is probably a good place to be for anyone who’s investing in the technology side of it, but also for the viewer, because it’s something that you’re familiar with. There is different stuff to do in each show, so you come back for different shows that you like, and it’s a slightly different experience,” says McHugh.
  • “My belief is that broadcasters should take more ownership and control of that [second screen] space –
  • “It’s always been a quandary for broadcasters – do you partner with a cross-channel, cross-platform app such as Zeebox, do you make something for your own channels, or do you make an app for each show,” says Rose. “When it comes to second screen, I think the pendulum started with broadcasters creating an app for each show. We’ve seen in the US some broadcasters have made more than 200 apps and it’s now widely referred to as the app graveyard – these apps from several seasons back. They’re not maintained, they don’t work often, they’ve got old content, some post was last updated 185 days ago. It’s not good. So that then moved to broadcasters sometimes creating their own channel-based apps. But I think it’s hard to get traffic to a channel-based app. People don’t just watch one channel, they watch multiple channels, and so the pendulum kept swinging towards the more general-purpose app.”
  • “It’s always been a quandary for broadcasters – do you partner with a cross-channel, cross-platform app such as Zeebox, do you make something for your own channels, or do you make an app for each show,” says Rose. “When it comes to second screen, I think the pendulum started with broadcasters creating an app for each show. We’ve seen in the US some broadcasters have made more than 200 apps and it’s now widely referred to as the app graveyard – these apps from several seasons back. They’re not maintained, they don’t work often, they’ve got old content, some post was last updated 185 days ago. It’s not good. So that then moved to broadcasters sometimes creating their own channel-based apps. But I think it’s hard to get traffic to a channel-based app. People don’t just watch one channel, they watch multiple channels, and so the pendulum kept swinging towards the more general-purpose app.”
  • “My argument to broadcasters is don’t bother making a dedicated second-screen app. Just look at the simplest user-journey possible, and that’s through the web-browser,” McDonnell says. He claims it’s already “very well proven” that sending an audience to an interactive, mobile-enabled site will drive more traffic than forcing users to download a native app.
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    The word we're using is 'repatriate' - we feel that TV is generating a lot of online activity and it's going elsewhere. We'd like to bring it back into the TV space if we can. What we try to do is almost replicate what people were doing online while they are watching TV and pro-actively serve them a whole lot of this extra information," he says
Carri Bugbee

Facebook Woos TV Networks With Data - Digits - WSJ - 0 views

  • This week, Facebook says it will begin sending weekly reports to America’s four largest television networks, offering a glimpse of how much chatter their shows are generating on the social network. The reports will reveal how many “actions” — likes, comments, or shares — a television episode has inspired on Facebook and how many members participated in an action.
  • Facebook, which will not make the results generally available, will share the data reports with ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS, and a small number of select partners.
  • Twitter, which has been gearing up for its initial public offering, is expected to begin to distribute the “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating,” its first measurement report in partnership with media measurement giant Nielsen, on Monday. The report will measure how many people participated in a conversation about a particular show, and how many people saw those tweets.
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  • Earlier this month, Facebook unveiled a new program to allow select media partners, such as CNN, to tap its public feed and see activity related to certain keywords. The new television data report will tally all posts, including private ones, but Facebook says the data is collected anonymously and will only be shown in aggregate to protect users’ privacy.
  • recent episode of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” generated more than 1 million interactions from some 750 thousand people.
  • In order to calculate chatter, Facebook had to create a library of keywords for each show, such as the names of main characters.
Carri Bugbee

Sports and Reality Shows Account for Half of Social TV Chatter - 0 views

  • sports (31%) and reality (17%) are the primary genres generating social TV buzz, combining to account for about half of social TV conversations between January 1 and November 30 2012.
  • The CTAM study also finds that viewers are more likely to talk about shows the next day or after (83%) or right after the show (75%). (The study was not limited to social media conversations.)
  • NBC was easily the most engaging network of the year, with the Olympics a big reason why.
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  • With an average of 80,000 social interactions per episode (and more than 250 telecasts per year), “SpongeBob SquarePants” was the program with the most social activity. But, the average “X Factor” episode generated more than 615,000 social interactions. (This list excludes sports and special events and includes data sources from the day of the telecast only.)
  • Second Annual Year End Stats Report
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    Sports and Reality Shows Account for Half of Social TV Chatter
Carri Bugbee

Viacom, Fremantle execs say second screen is key to broadcast strategy - FierceCable - 0 views

  • Viacom, for one, is actively using social media applications, such as a subscription-based app for MTV Europe and a soon-to-be-launched "Mon Nick Junior" application targeting preschoolers. It's also studying different demographics, particularly millennial and post-millennials, to glean ideas for additional multiscreen products.
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    YouTube and the short-form video content in general is taking a more important place.
Carri Bugbee

Nielsen and Twitter Unveil Social TV Metrics, Showing How Little Tweets Line Up with Ra... - 0 views

  • ne thing is immediately clear: There is practically no overlap between the most-tweeted shows on TV and the highest-rated shows.
  • Seen through a Twitter lens, the No. 1 television show for the week of Sept. 23 to 29 was AMC’s “Breaking Bad” by a mile, with 9.28 million people seeing tweets about the show’s finale — but the episode wasn’t even among the top 20 in total viewership for the period, according to Nielsen primetime ratings.
  • But the divergence between the top shows Americans actually watch on TV and what they talk about on Twitter illustrates that there is not a strong correlation, today, between the two mediums. Only one show, two airings of NBC’s “The Voice,” appear in both top 10 rankings.
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  • the data shows the Twitter TV audience for an episode is, on average, 50 times larger than the authors who are generating tweets.
  • In its IPO filing, Twitter said the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating will “not directly generate revenue” but said, “we believe (it) will enhance our attractiveness to users and advertisers.”
  • Facebook, which has a total user base more than five times the size of Twitter’s, is playing catch-up to Twitter in trying to provide a similar guide for how social activity on its service relates to TV. Last week, Facebook began sharing weekly data about interactions among U.S. users for about 45 broadcast shows in primetime with ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC and a few other partners.
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    There is practically no overlap between the most-tweeted shows on TV and the highest-rated shows.
Carri Bugbee

AwesomenessTV boss talks YouTube networks for kids: 'I don't think we're replacing tele... - 0 views

  • Robbins, whose career has included producing TV shows Smallville and One Tree Hill, admitted that it's still much more profitable to have a popular TV show than a popular YouTube show, but sees that changing. "The advertising model is catching up very slowly. Right now TV is getting this much money, and YouTube is getting this much," said Robbins, with gestures to indicate huge and tiny ad revenues respectively.
  • That's one reason why DreamWorks bought AwesomenessTV so early in its growth. Robbins said the company plans to spend around $10m creating shows this year, from bigger projects like Side Effects to smaller videos designed for viral sharing.
  • "There's a handful of companies in Los Angeles right now who I think are going to be the next generation of cable networks,
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  • What would Robbins be doing if he was in charge of Nickelodeon in 2013, for example, to respond to changing habits of their audience, and disruptive competition from the YouTube world? "The one thing that I would do: I don't think they make enough content. If you look at the primetime schedule on most of those networks, there are three to four original shows on, and it's not enough. It used to be enough when there were only two channels, but now with a mobile and a tablet, I have so many choices," said Robbins.
  • "That's the big problem: the model is broken. Their shows are relatively expensive to make, so they can only afford to make a certain number of them. So they are sort of stuck, and until they figure out how to change that model, you're going to see the audience keep eroding."
  • children are still sitting on their sofas watching videos, but the source is now YouTube and the devices are smartphones and tablets. "It's not just my kids, or kids in the US. It's kids everywhere," said Robbins, adding that half his company's views come from outside the US, and that half its views and comments come from mobile devices.
Carri Bugbee

Action Figures: How Second Screens are Transforming TV Viewing - 0 views

  • nearly half of smartphone owners (46%) and tablet owners (43%) said they use their devices as second screens while watching TV every day. And more than two-thirds of tablet and smartphone owners said they used these second screens multiple times a week during Q1 2013.
  • Among tablet owners, general Web searches (76%) and general Web browsing (68%) are still among the top second-screen activities. But consumers are also using second screens for activities that are directly related to the content they’re viewing, as almost half of tablet owners look up information about what they’re watching.
Carri Bugbee

Twitter Ignores the Emmys: Show Falls Flat Across Social Media | TheWrap TV - 0 views

  • The 2012 Emmys flopped on the social media front in comparison to this year’s other prominent awards shows. While the Grammys, Video Music Awards and the BET Awards set new records across Twitter, Facebook and assorted TV companion apps like GetGlue, the Grammys registered a stultifying 1.56 million interactions throughout the day,
  • This year’s Grammy Awards generated roughly seven times more social interaction than last year’s show, according to Trendrr. The Emmys? About one and a half times as much.
Carri Bugbee

The Toad Stool by Alan Wolk: The Door To The Second Screen May Be Through The First - 0 views

  • consumers have been slow to adopt any of the tablet and smartphone-based companion apps created for TV. It doesn’t seem to matter much what functionality the apps offer: discovery, additional content, social intercourse or remote control: the number of viewers willing to both download them and then use them on a regular basis has remained quite small*
  • There’s an oft-quoted Nielsen stat about how 84% of people are using their tablets while they are watching TV. Which generally means “checking their email or posting something on Facebook because they’re not all that engaged with whatever’s on TV.”
  • That’s where an actual second screen app may come into play. Both to initiate turning the first screen additional content on and off, and, once it’s up there, to interact with it. (Because for certain types of programming, polls and quizzes are always going to be an option.)
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  • I still firmly believe that program guide functionality is what’s going to get the mass of viewers over to the second screen: it’s just easier to control your TV from a touch screen device that already has a built-in keyboard
Carri Bugbee

Hulu Struggles To Survive The Influence Of Its Parent Companies | Fast Company - 0 views

  • Despite all that brain-sprayingly awesome news, the lords of television are having second thoughts about this whole disruption thing. The loudly noted woes of the entertainment industry aside, TV still generates more than $70 billion in advertising revenue annually.
Carri Bugbee

4th Edition of SocialTV Index Tracking Survey by Ring Digital llc Shows Twitter is Up 2... - 0 views

  • Ring Digital estimates the Social TV Engager population at ~57 million TV viewers.
  • Twitter was used by 28.4% of the Social TV Engager population up 28% from six months ago.
  • News was selected by 48.1% of Social TV Engagers as one of five genres of prime-time TV content about which they have voted, posted, shared or commented.
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  • The results reveal the strength of Twitter as a core news platform. Journalists, bloggers and athletes use Twitter as a next-generation newswire. For these users, Donald Trump has done a great service to the social media community by cementing the useful role that Twitter plays in news dissemination, even if the corporate team at Twitter continues to believe they can create a mass media juggernaut that competes head-to-head with Facebook."
Carri Bugbee

How social TV buzz really does move the ratings needle - 0 views

  • linear TV is not an even playing field. So it’s dangerous to conclude that a particularly buzzy TV show bombed in the ratings, and by extension, social media doesn’t influence viewership. Social TV’s influence complements TV but does not exceed it. If a show is buried on the schedule, it will likely fail regardless of the social TV ratings.
  • “TV binge-watching is a pandemic,” explains Slate. None of this viewing is considered — not to mention any DVR’d shows after 3 days — and viewers who discover shows via social media are often more inclined than the general population to watch in an unmeasured way
  • if you’re not investing in social, that silence doesn’t ensure you’ll stay at a ratings par, but that you’ll face an inevitable decline. If you’re not part of the conversation, if you’re absent from the social platforms where millions of TV viewers discover content — across all age groups on Facebook — then your mass media brands become less “mass” over time.
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  • In the end, we know that social TV buzz really does move the ratings needle, and by extension, it helps predict the success of a TV show. But we don’t know how much. It varies by show, by network, by circumstance. While it’s dangerous to assert that social media gets all the credit for a show’s success, it’s even more dangerous to claim that social media makes no mainstream ratings impact.
Carri Bugbee

Pay-TV Operators Gear Up for Internet TV Invasion - 0 views

  • Apple TV is reportedly developing ad-skipping technology so owners of a set-top box can watch shows commercial-free. The propsed deal with cable companies would reimburse programmers for skipped ads.
  • Google is really just hoping to beat Apple to the punch, despite the fact that the company already has its Apple TV streaming product on the market, according to The New York Times "Apple’s thinking… is that any next-generation television service must be set up in partnership with existing distributors, in part for quality assurance reasons. A future Apple service could include a user-friendly interface layered on top of Time Warner Cable or Cablevision’s channel lineup."
  • Adoption from the major networks is "very unlikely to support any service with their linear feed that allows for commercial messages to be skipped even if they get some form of compensation," Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer for WPP's GroupM, told AdAge. "This is not a viable economic model and subscribers to the system would not pay an adequate premium to compensate for it." 
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  • However, Forbes points out the longer-term effect. “Cable companies get paid for the ads that consumers are no longer watching. Since ad rates are determined by eyeball counts, those rates will decline as more viewers opted-out, so cable companies will need to figure out new ways to make money.” 
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    Intel
Carri Bugbee

Smart TV: The industry push to keep getting smarter - latimes.com - 0 views

  • Still, you might say a revolution is brewing in the living room — and this one will be televised. It portends not only a change in the TV viewing experience but also poses a threat to cable and satellite TV distributors. Even network executives' notions about scheduling — how positioning a new show adjacent to a popular program in the evening lineup to drive ratings — look anachronistic at a time when Nielsen estimates that 47% of all American households have DVRs and can watch recorded shows whenever they choose, and 55% of broadband homes have at least one TV connected to the Internet, according to market researcher the Diffusion Group.
  • Concerns about how to reach this group known as the "never connecteds" and count their viewing in a show's ratings adds to a list of headaches that include slumping prime-time broadcast TV ratings and the flight of advertisers to cable.
  • these smart TVs may look dated compared with what Silicon Valley giant Intel has in store for later this year, not to mention whatever Apple Inc. is planning with its mysterious but hotly anticipated flat-screen TV.
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  • "We're in a golden era of television. Never in the history of the media has so much money been spent producing high-quality content," said Eric Huggers, general manager of Intel Media, expressing a broad consensus. "If you look at the technology that is used to deliver that, it feels stuck in the past. We think we need to put the technology on a par with the quality of the editorial."
  • "This is going to be the first true cable TV replacement service delivered over broadband," said Michael Greeson, president of the Texas-based media research firm the Diffusion Group. "It's going to tell us so much about the television industry and what relationships have been bent or broken in terms of [Intel] being able to bring first-run content ... as opposed to delayed, on-demand."
Carri Bugbee

Anti-Piracy Alternative to "Six Strikes" and Copyright Alert System | Variety - 0 views

  • The owner of the nation’s largest cable operator has begun preliminary discussions with both film and TV studios and other leading Internet service providers about employing technology, according to sources, that would provide offending users with transactional opportunities to access legal versions of copyright-infringing videos as they’re being downloaded.
  • The new approach would be an alternative to the Copyright Alert System, a voluntary initiative many leading programmers and distributors like Comcast have been utilizing since February. Other CAS participants include AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision, as well as all studios affiliated with MPAA.
  • Using pirated content as a platform to drive legal transactions reflects an alternate philosophy regarding copyright infringement, one that sees the illegal activity less as a crime that requires punishment and more as lead generation to a consumer whose behavior is borne out of inadequate legitimate digital content options.
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  • But there are a few crucial differences: With the new conversion strategy, the notification would occur in real time. Though not instantaneous, it would be a good deal faster than CAS, which sends subscribers e-mails, voicemails or browser-based messages that can occur weeks after the alleged piracy takes place.
Carri Bugbee

Tweets Provide New Way to Gauge TV Audiences - WSJ.com - 0 views

  • Twitter's 49.2 million U.S. users generally skew younger and are disproportionately in cities, for example, according to marketers and media analysts.
  • marketers see potential value in knowing which shows have Twitter enthusiasts. For some, it is becoming a factor when they purchase TV time: The theory is that if fans are engaged on Twitter that "means the ads are also being paid attention to,"
  • The stakes are high for Twitter, which is under the spotlight of an initial public offering of stock and has identified TV-related ad spending as a crucial revenue driver.
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  • "If your show is creating conversations on Twitter, it is more valuable, and you should get credit for that," said Rachael Horwitz , a spokeswoman for Twitter, which provided information to Nielsen to help create the new Twitter TV ratings.
  • At an industry event in Beverly Hills this summer, CBS Chief Research Officer David Poltrack id "word of mouth" interactions about TV mostly still occur face to face, not on social media. He said that while Twitter's importance is growing and CBS is "immersing" itself in it, "right now it is focused on a small segment of the population."
  • Nielsen says the number of people tweeting about TV was 19 million in the second quarter, up 24% over the year-earlier period.
  • "We are a national company and our sales come from the suburban market more so than the metropolitan areas, where [Twitter's] strength lies," said Michael Zuna , chief marketing officer of the insurer.
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    marketers see potential value in knowing which shows have Twitter enthusiasts. For some, it is becoming a factor when they purchase TV time:
Carri Bugbee

Google to sunset Google TV brand as its smart TV platform merges with Android - Tech Ne... - 0 views

  • Three years after launching the first generation of Google TV devices, Google is now looking to rid itself of the brand and realign its smart TV platform efforts more closely with Android. The move is part admission that Google TV failed, part hope that Android will eventually find its place in the living room.
  • They are calling it ‘Android TV.’”
  • Google announced earlier this year that it would update Google TV to the latest version of Android, which would allow developers to use the same APIs available on mobile devices.
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  • Google recently announced the latest version of Android, code-named KitKat, which could be available as early as next week.
  • So why did Google finally decide to rid itself of the brand? The upgrade to the latest version of Android seems to be the main factor, but chances are that the surprising success of Chromecast made the decision even easier.
  • Not only was Chromecast sold out for weeks, it’s currently the number one selling electronics device on Amazon ,
Carri Bugbee

Twitter and TV: How should brands respond to multi-screening? | MyCustomer - 0 views

  • On their own, Twitter efforts resulted in a less-than-inspiring 4% boost in positive reactions to the well-known supermarket. Similarly, TV only managed to generate a measly 4% incline. However, as a twosome, TV and Twitter notched up a far greater 21% rise – that’s 21% more people willing to do their next shop at Sainsbury’s than before.
  • “This interaction between TV and Twitter is not something that we’ve orchestrated,” Mortensen reminded us. “It’s something that the audience are doing themselves. It’s driven by people, so it’s very natural.”
  • The findings indicated two different ways of engaging with Twitter in connection with TV – the ‘lean forward’ and ‘lean back’ approaches. Those who ‘lean back’ while interacting want stimulation without having to commit. In causal browsing mode, they will switch between the first and the second screen at will. Advertisers should not make the mistake of thinking that this nonchalant attitude creates disengagement though – having both screens working together keeps people in the living room in front of ads and makes them less likely to wander off. This type of audience are still taking in messages implicitly, and often find themselves unconsciously responding to brands' triggers.
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  • Those who interact while ‘leaning forward’, meanwhile, are actively looking to extend the TV experience. They seek to become part of the show and become empowered by having their voice heard. This kind of interaction is very emotive, and it’s this emotion that heightens engagement.
  • three-quarters of users look up a tweet when they see it advertised. As a result, TV ads which feature hashtags drive 42% more conversation than those which don’t.  
  • different types of TV shows have different social rhythms which determine the points at which people tweet, meaning brands must choose their moment carefully. So, advertisers need to understand how broadcasted content works in order to anticipate activity and capitalise on prime moments.
  • 3. Association – If your brand isn’t on TV, or if a campaign has come to an end, you can still engage your audience on Twitter by capitalising on trending TV moments.
  • the findings show that, on the whole, entertaining tweets – which are either interesting or funny, or best of all, both – are the most effective.
  • Receiving a retweet “evokes a strong positive emotional reaction” according to Thinkbox, which, for advertisers, is right on the money. Literally.  
  • “The increasing evidence we’re seeing is that there is a symbiotic effect. So when tweets go up, viewing [of the related TV show] goes up... and when the viewing of a show goes up we see evidence of tweets going up as well.” 
Carri Bugbee

Twittervision: Twitter Taps Video Via Amplify, TV Ad Targeting, Vine | Variety - 0 views

  • . In keeping with the company’s emphasis on being the go-to platform to collectively share experiences in real time, Costolo hinted, at a recent appearance at the Brookings Institute in Washington D.C., that Twitter is testing a feature that would allow users to essentially “replay” live events and pinpoint peak moments that can be viewed if missed the first time around.
  • Yet another form of video that will be coming to more and more Twitter feeds is TV Ad Targeting, a clever tool the company took out of beta last week that identifies someone who tweets about a show as likely to have just seen a commercial, and streams to them an accompanying digital promotion.
  • Twitter is also looking a lot like a venue for programming: Several innovative new episodic shortform series have used Twitter as a distribution platform in recent months.
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  • “What it tells me is that Twitter is going to be a player in video distribution,” said Erik Flannigan, executive VP of multiplatform strategy and development at Viacom Entertainment Group
  • For Twitter, the advertising opportunity has come in an area that skeptics early on thought was inviolate territory: inside the stream of tweets from each user’s followers.
  • While Twitter has always been an effective springboard for TV, the platform previously strictly sent users to the TV set or to a link in another browser or app via retweet. That changed in June 2012, with the introduction of Twitter Cards, which essentially expanded a space once restricted to 140 characters to accommodate anything from a still photo to a video player — all without leaving Twitter.
  • For Twitter, Cards also paved the way for Amplify. Twitter first tested the initiative with ESPN last December during telecasts of BCS college football games. Thirty-second game highlights were targeted at sports fans in the Twittersphere just moments after they occurred in real time as a means of drawing more viewers from that segment of the audience most interested in the content, as well as to retain those already watching.
  • Twitter began bringing together other networks and advertisers for Amplify campaigns, including Turner Broadcasting with AT&T and Coke Zero for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament; and with Sprint, Taco Bell and Sony Pictures for NBA postseason games.
  • To wit, BBC America used Amplify for the season premiere of “Top Gear,” seeding Twitter with all sorts of video extras synched to the show’s airing but not available in the broadcast itself.
  • Having introduced TV Ad Targeting in beta mode in May, last week Twitter touted engagement metrics that should help encourage more advertisers to sign on. Among the first brands to experiment included Jaguar, Samsung and Holiday Inn.
  • Video can be intertwined with photos and text. It’s not entirely different from the model of so-called alternative reality games, but it is rooted on the social network instead of an array of websites. “I call it ‘disembodied media,’ ” said Mark Ghuneim, founder and CEO of social media tracking service Trendrr. “It’s a disembodied TV show taking place in disparate parts, times, and sources. It’s crazy in a great way.”
  • Interactive or participatory TV has been on the margins of the business for so long that it seems like it’s never going to happen. But Twitter may be just the soil where a long-delayed germination could actually take root. Let’s not forget that the average member of any audience has a device in their pocket capable of transmitting quality video — how can that not disrupt the traditional understanding of what programming is?
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