Social TV and Film

A broad consortium of TV station groups have banded together for what may be the most ambitious effort yet to establish a dominant brand in the sprawling social-TV space.

second-screen experience bringing together consumers and companion content for Web browsers and tablet apps operating on both iOs and Android systems

We’re trying to bring brand advertisers into the conversation. When the Ford Fusion, for example, is integrated into an episode of “White Collar,” it’s then easy for us to promote that positioning or brand integration in platforms like Character Chatter.

We don’t want people to view something as an ad, we want people to view it as added content to their “White Collar” show experience.

Viewers using the Viggle platform can access interesting plot points, Q&As, live polls—things like that—while watching the show.

29% of social TV viewers engage in social TV primarily "to advise my network of friends and let them know what's good and bad." Women are more likely than men to share such opinions (36% vs. 21%).23% of social TV viewers engage in social TV primarily "to be connected with others who have similar television program likes and dislikes."

Discovery is the dominant paradigm on Connected TV.

ut Nascar's new page has a key new feature, which is the ability to pull in tweets related to a live event from a variety of sources. In the case of Nascar, tweets about Pocono 400 were being pulled in from drivers like Jeff Gordon as well as sports writers, and the curation was executed through an algorithm that searched for relevant content with the assistance of human editors, according to a Twitter blog post. It's further evidence of Twitter's desire to be the platform advertisers turn to when they're looking to execute promotions around major live events such as the Super Bowl or the Oscars. Last month, they announced a partnership with ESPN to create branded campaigns around tentpole sports events.

#Nascar page is the first of its kind and has a slightly different layout than the brand pages Twitter unveiled in December, which feature customizable header images and enable brands to keep a particular tweet -- often a photo or video that can auto-expand -- at the top,

A majority (58%) of heavy engagers -- i.e., consumers who share related thoughts via social networks at least 10 times a week -- report watching more live TV, according to an iModerate Research Technologies study.

Among some 150 males and females who engage in what Rossow calls “social TV” at least once a week, the emerging behavior has also made these viewers into more active consumers and influencers.

An increasing number of viewers also "love the social interaction and frequently add shows to their viewing lineup due to social chatter,” Rossow notes. “That adds up to more time spent on social networks and more hours watching television.”

Some are experimenting with facilitating paid-for and free viewer voting in talent shows, via Facebook.

study by TVGuide found that 27% say they watch more live TV to avoid spoilers via social media.

3 out of 10 people decided to watch a TV show because of something they read or saw on a social networking site. (TVGuide’s study, which didn’t limit respondents to social media users, found that 17% said they started watching a TV show because of a social impression.)

The ultimate driver of the universal screen revolution is the Cloud storage,

top Nielsen executive says the media ratings giant has begun working with its clients to “redefine” the very nature of the households it measures. The reason, Pat McDonough, senior vice president-insight and analytics at Nielsen, said Monday during the opening session of the Advertising Research Foundation’s annual Audience Measurement conference in New York, is that Americans increasingly are accessing video programming from non-traditional devices and in non-traditional ways.

Of the 6.3% of household video consumption that takes place, McDonough said about 3% each currently is being done either online or via mobile devices, and that other devices like video game consoles are rising fast. She said other big trends are the aging and the multicultural diversification of American households -- but despite all those trends, Americans are watching more video programming than ever before: an average of 35 hours per week.

“We are spending more time watching video than we are working,” McDonough added, alluding to average U.S. labor estimates.

or all the video people watch on the web, it is still a tiny fraction of how much they watch on TV in terms of time spent. In a report put out yesterday on the State of the Media summarizing 2011 data, Nielsen estimates Americans spend an average of 32 hours and 47 minutes a week watching traditional TV. They only spend an average of 3 hours and 58 minutes a week on the Internet, and only 27 minutes a week watching video online. All those billions of videos watched online still only represent 1.4 percent of the time spent watching traditional TV.

Even on the web, there is a huge difference between the video sites which attract the biggest audiences and those which are the most engaging. The top 5 video sites by unique visitors are YouTube, Vevo, Yahoo, Facebook, and MSN. But the top 5 video sites by time spent are Netflix, YouTube, Tudou, Hulu, and Megavideo.