As upfront deal-making moves into the early innings, a top cable executive expects a strong market, but with slower pricing increases than the past two summers. In turn, that might lead networks to sell less inventory. “A little bit of a moderation after two strong years,” said Scripps Networks Interactive CFO Joe NeCastro. Scripps, with Food Network and HGTV, has traditionally sold about half of its inventory -- par in the cable realm. (The broadcast networks go considerably higher.) Last year, however, it sold more to take advantage of the heated market. Speaking at an investor event, NeCastro did indicate that market trends look positive, with scatter pricing up in the single-digit range over levels in the spring of 2011. Separately, NeCastro said Scripps has been paying attention to YouTube’s efforts to launch online channels -- notably the food-oriented outlet led by former Food Network executive Bruce Seidel, although it doesn’t perceive an immediate red alert. HUNGER, from Ben Silverman’s Electus studio, is scheduled to launch July 2. Last week, it announced its programming lineup, which includes a show from Duff Goldman, who hosted “Ace of Cakes” on the Food Network for years. He will also help with talent and programming at HUNGER. The YouTube outlet will launch a show with Urbanspoon.com, where bloggers will help craft a show around culinary discoveries nationwide. One weekly series, “Casserole Queens,” is set at the Austin, Texas eatery of two best friends specializing in comfort food. Another weekly series, “Brothers Green,” focuses on two musician-caterer brothers in Brooklyn facing a challenge each show. Speaking broadly about YouTube and other Web efforts, NeCastro said the company spends about $500 million a year in programming, while Web ventures will be spending considerably less. “We also think we have opportunities to build video businesses that are more engaging but in a better environment … food-specific or lifestyle-specific,” he said. Also, talent or formats that break out on YouTube could move to cable for broader reach; YouTube could become a version of a farm system. At the same time, food or other lifestyle-oriented content could increase interest in the genre.
Internet-connected televisions are already making a mark when it comes to growing advertising impressions. Some of these devices include "Smart TV," Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 (PS3), Google TV, Apple TV and Roku. So far this year, Net-connected TV video ad impressions are five times that of 2011, per Videology, a video advertising/network company. There are also five times more advertisers and 15 times more campaigns when comparing May 2012 versus May 2011. Citing data from Leichtman Research, it is estimated that 38% of U.S. homes have Internet-connected TVs -- up from 30% a year ago. In addition, 70% of consumers have an interest in watching more programming on new digital devices, with 40% saying they will “definitely” watch more this year. Videology says measurement is still hard to determine in the space when looking at video impressions among mobile, tablet, and connected TV devices. "These impressions are not currently reported by comScore or other measurement services that track online video advertising," notes Videology. As a result, "the commitment to these devices by advertisers is not yet fully quantifiable and likely underreported.” Emerging devices comprise approximately 15% of the monthly total of all digital impressions, or over 75 million impressions.
Transmission service chain AAMCO is extending its “We Hear You” campaign to encompass the company’s 50th anniversary this year. The campaign, where an AAMCO customer comes in and tries to recreate the sounds of his troubled powertrain using only his voice box, has a noise-making AAMCO customer doing his thing through the decades. A second ad contrasts AAMCO trustworthiness as a go-to place for all engine needs with vile people you'd never trust for anything. The anniversary spot, the third iteration of “We Hear You,” follows a family from 1963 through today, in time-appropriate ages, hairstyles and apparel as they visit AAMCO dealerships. The couple vocalizes noises, hoping to obtain an expert diagnosis from the technicians. In the last image, where he's a middle-aged guy today, the punch line is he's just trying to clear his throat. In the second ad, the images leading up to a woman walking into an AAMCO store with implicit trust that the shop will be able to fix anything, are pretty grodie: a woman approaches her cubicle to find a guy sitting there, impassively licking her computer keyboard. Another cringe-worthy moment asks: "Would you trust this guy to hug your mom?" The guy -- corpulent, hirsute, dissipated, and half-naked -- hugs a mom. Then, there's "would you trust anyone to give you a massage," as a professional masked wrestler leaps from a credenza onto the "patient's" back. Says Jack Bachinsky, VP marketing: "We decided to extend [“We Hear You,”] and this is the perfect next-generation ad." He says the “Trust” campaign reflects the importance of the issue based on consumer research. "We have a long history of creating humorous ads going back to campaigns we have done in the past like one using Zsa Zsa Gabor, or one where monkeys are beating on a transmission. It plays to our history." Bachinsky says the media buy is all spot, with regional ad coops independently handling buys in all major markets. "It's a staggered release, so we recommended that they run the 50th anniversary first to align with an online sweepstakes we are doing, and then run 'Trust' in the fall." The digital strategy, in addition to search-engine marketing and optimization in each market, includes a tie-in with Facebook, and a sweepstakes around the 50th anniversary involving a giveaway of either a brand new 2013 Corvette, or a 1963 split-window Corvette. The company has also parented with the Military Order of the Purple Heart, which will select 50 families of injured vets in 50 states who cannot afford car repairs. Each will get up to $7,000 in service.
Over-the-top mobile video services -- and TV Everywhere services from content owners -- are generally better performers when it comes to iPad downloads than TV Everywhere apps from multichannel video retailers. SNL Kagan says free video iPad apps on mobile devices from major content owners, including Walt Disney, Viacom and Time Warner, scored higher in iPad downloads than multichannel video distributors. For example, in the second quarter of 2011, Walt Disney held the top spot in more weekly appearances in the top 100 iPad downloadable apps: 36. Turner/CNN Interactive, Hulu, Netflix, imdb.com, Flixster, NPR, Pandora Media and Weather Channel were next with 12. Comcast’s Xfinity free app and HBO free app were next with 10 appearances. Time Warner Cable had nine. In addition, those pay over-the-top (OTT) apps (Hulu Plus and Netflix) are more consistent and perform better with consumers than TV Everywhere apps from traditional multichannel video operators -- those coming from cable, telco and satellite companies. Although multichannel video distributors' TV Everywhere apps do launch strong initially -- in the top 100 downloaded apps -- they “quickly disappear,” says the SNL Kagan report. These TV Everywhere apps include Time Warner Cable, Comcast’s Xfinity TV, Cox, Bright House, DirecTV and Cablevision’s Optimum service. By contrast, Over-The-Top services like Netflix and Hulu Plus have remained in the top 50 or so iPad apps. The report says this is also because Hulu and Netflix have been around longer, and their on-demand film and TV titles are greater.
If eight ABC stations have their way, viewers will go to sleep after watching “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and wake up listening to their branded alarm clocks. Call it a different version of “Good Morning America.” The ABC-owned Houston station has launched an app featuring an alarm clock that offers news and weather information, as well as traffic reports. If it clicks with users, the information would be tempting enough for consumers to wake up and turn the ABC station back on for morning programming. The free app works via an iPhone or iPod touch and versions of the “ABC13 Houston Alarm Clock” will soon be available locally through all eight stations owned by ABC in markets including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Users can customize the wake-up tones, choosing a waterfall, rooster crowing or the voices of local anchors. The app was developed by the ABC-owned station group’s digital operations in conjunction with the Disney/ABC Television digital group. The app “makes the trusted content gathered” by the stations “even more accessible,” stated Carla Carpenter, senior vice president in digital media for the station group.
Consumers continue to buy 3DTVs, but not at levels that would be considered a blockbuster rate, and they’re certainly not clamoring for the feature. According to The NPD Group, 3DTV unit sales increased 74% and revenues increased 64% in the first quarter of 2012 compared with the same period last year. They accounted for 11% of all flat-panel TV sales during the quarter -- double the amount from the same period in 2011 -- and were 22% of all large-screen purchases in the U.S. Still, 3D capability is only a secondary feature in the minds of consumers. According to NPD, only 14% of consumers who were interested in or expected to purchase a television in the next six months said 3D capability was a “must have” feature. More than two-thirds (68%) said it was a nice feature they may use in the future. “It’s just not really getting the reception from consumers,” Ben Arnold, director of industry analysis at NPD, tells Marketing Daily. “It’s playing well at retail. People who have done a demo are coming away with a positive impression, but we’re not seeing that translate into a reason for buying a 3D TV.” The biggest hurdles continue to be the cost and uncomfortable nature of 3D glasses, and especially the lack of (or lack of awareness of) 3D content, Arnold says. “You have to give consumers a reason to watch stuff, but you have to make it easy for them to find 3D content,” he says. “If there’s closer marketing with big content plays, that’s something that can really be interesting to consumers.” Sports fans and gamers could be key to generating excitement around the market in the future. More high-profile sporting events, such as the Olympics or Super Bowl broadcast in 3D (and marketed in a way so that consumers would be aware the programming is available), or a “killer title” in the gaming space could generate excitement the way HDTV did in its early days, Arnold says. “I think there are a lot of lessons that can be taken from HD,” he says. “If one of the game makers really commits to a line of games in 3D, I think that can grow some interest.” The question is whether anyone might be willing to make a large investment in 3D technology at this point. “In a sense, the cat’s out of the bag that consumers are tepid on 3D,” Arnold says. “In terms of future investment, I’m a little skeptical where people might see that.” All hope is not lost, however. Sales are increasing, and there could be a day when the capability reaches enough saturation that significant investment from content producers and distributors would be worthwhile. “We could get to a point where the installed base of 3D is massive, and we discover all of a sudden that 30% of households have 3D TVs because 70% of the sets sold had the capability,” Arnold says. “That may make it more palatable.”
Nielsen rival Rentrak this morning announced a deal with credit card giant MasterCard that it says will integrate Rentrak's TV audience data with MasterCard's “consumer trends and insights” derived from billions of payment transactions. Rentrak said the deal is intended to provide advertisers and agencies with “deeper insights into media consumption and aggregated consumer buyer behavior to help them reach their intended audiences more effectively.” The deal is reminiscent of one that Rentrak chief Bill Livek orchestrated years ago when he was overseeing Simmons Market Research Bureau (now part of Experian). That data integration ultimately led to the creation of Mastercard’s Transactional Data Solutions database, which is so powerful it was essentially taken in-house by the credit services marketer. The deal is also significant because it comes at a time when numerous Rentrak competitors -- including Nielsen, TRA Analytics, and others -- are striking agreements to integrate their media audience exposure data with consumer transactional databases. “This collaboration will allow local and national advertisers and agencies, networks and stations to plan, buy and sell TV programs on the basis of consumer product consumption trends ranging across a wide variety of categories including retail, telecommunications, grocery, entertainment, travel and family and quick service restaurants to name a few,” Rentrak said in this morning’s announcement, adding: “Under the agreement, MasterCard Advisors, a unit of MasterCard Worldwide, will provide Rentrak anonymous, aggregated insights on consumer spending behavior and trends within each category.”
ABC has a wake-up call for its local TV station viewers. In keeping with the morning news for which most stations are known, the ABC Owned Television Stations Group has started rolling out the alarm clock app for smartphones in the major markets. The app is designed to give at-a-glance basic information and simple functionality. Available now for the ABC13 station in Houston, the model will be rolled out in the next few weeks to the remaining seven stations. The app is a clean and simple design that has almost everything on a single screen. The current weather and near-term forecast is in the upper right quadrant and slides out to reveal long-term forecasts, a video update and current weather radar map. The actual alarm clock is in the left top quadrant, and it can be set to go off by the user any time. A Traffic link slips in an interactive real-time traffic map. And the core of the front page is an expandable window of headlines. The rollout version of the app we used carried no advertising, although we noticed room available beneath the news window for a standard mobile banner. The company tells Mobile Marketing Daily that there are ad opportunities in the app, and it can be sold into the individual station-specific apps or accross all 8 markets. The app, which was designed by ABC/Disney’s digital teams, aims to be clean and uncluttered for easy look-ups of news-related essentials throughout the day. Much like the early days of the Web, multiple legacy media constituencies are battling over who commands local mobile mindshare when it comes to news and services. Most local newspapers have their own mobile sites and app, and many local affiliate news stations were among the first major media companies to see the potential for mobile long before smartphones emerged. For a number of years an alliance of affiliates have been trying to power local digital TV broadcasting directly to handsets, but that effort has been very late in coming. Meanwhile, digital incumbents like Google, directories, and apps like Yelp, where and Foursquare have tried to engage the local ad markets in many different ways. According to a recent projection from BIA Kelsey, 15% of local ad spending will go to mobile platforms in the next four years. Key categories in local ad spend -- especially on TV, such as auto and retail -- will be among the most aggressive in moving their budgets into mobile opportunities, the research firm says.
Skinnygirl Cocktails is looking to build on its considerable momentum with new brand extensions and a new campaign dubbed “Drink Like a Lady.” The multimillion-dollar campaign, spanning television, print and digital, represents a tripling of the brand’s 2011 marketing investment, according to parent Beam Inc. The creative, from the Walton Isaacson agency, celebrates women “making their own rules” through a tongue-in-cheek approach to modern social etiquette. The first TV spot, for example, shows a prim woman from the 50’s stating that “a lady always wears sensible shoes,” followed by a cut to a scene of modern young women enjoying Skinnygirl at an informal gathering where “sensible shoes” translate to flip-flops. Women “know what they want…and the art of socializing should be on their own terms,” says Skinnygirls Cocktails founder Bethenny Frankel. Both the brand and the new campaign are about “reinventing the art of cocktailing,” she adds. The campaign also promotes the brand’s new and expanded products, including ready-to-mix Skinnygirl Vodka with Natural Flavors, Skinnygirl The Wine Collection, and new Piña Colada and White Peach Margarita flavors of its ready-to-serve cocktails. “Skinnygirl now has all of the wine, vodka and ready-to-serve options you need, without the extra calories you don’t,” says the first TV ad’s voiceover. The TV spots will run in prime time through the summer on cable channels including Bravo, HGTV, Food Network and E!. Print and digital elements will continue throughout 2012. Magazines in the schedule include Cosmopolitan, Food Network Magazine, Marie Claire and Redbook. Paid digital ads on sites including Weight Watchers, Pandora, Glo, Meebo and Hulu will complement the brand’s social media strategy on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Last year, Skinnygirl Cocktails had the fastest volume growth, in percentage terms, among all spirits brands, according to the SpiritsTAB Report from Technomic’s Adult Beverage Resource Group. The brand sold 586,000 9-liter cases, a 388.3% jump over 2010’s volume.
Adap.tv on Wednesday introduced a new ad management product for video called App Center, which aims to make it easier for advertisers and publishers that buy and sell inventory using the video ad exchange to manage working with the 100+ technology providers in the video advertising ecosystem. With App Center, third parties simply embed their special functions -- whether it be data, rich media, measurement, verification, etc. If you wanted to run a campaign with say, Innovid, which is App Center’s launch partner, and add a layer of targeting with data from BlueKai (also a launch partner), you can do this with a few simple clicks -- you can effectively make the buy without needing to leave App Center. Adap.tv does the billing and invoicing too. To be sure, there is a daunting number of video networks, audience measurement platforms, data management platforms, ad exchanges and others for buyers and sellers of video to work with. If Adap.tv can streamline the process of managing all these relationships, then there is certainly a market for it. The trick will be getting all 100+ video advertising vendors to jump on board. Because of this, Adap.tv has announced App Center a week early -- its official launch date is May 31-- so that more technology providers have time to add their APIs to it. "Given the complexities of the video ad landscape, the promise of TV and video advertising cannot be fulfilled by one single company," said Teg Grenager, co-founder and vice president of Adap.tv. "What buyers and sellers need is a platform that aggregates all the best brand technologies and provides automated tools to manage them."
Gabbing about TV losses is a big deal. That’s because everyone would rather talk up profits. Increasingly, when it comes to some high-priced TV programming, talk isn’t cheap.TV sports are still a big deal for major TV networks. It’s live. TV commercials can’t be fast-forwarded. Advertisers are happy. Networks are happy that advertisers are happy.NBC says it will lose money on the London Olympics, according to Gary Zenkel, president of NBC Olympics and executive vice president of strategic partnerships for NBC Sports Group.This will be the second Olympics in a row where it has seeped red ink. NBC lost money on the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. Zenkel says the London games were part of earlier multi-Olympic deal that included the Vancouver Games.But this won’t be the same going forward. He is pretty "confident" the network will make a profit with its upcoming Olympics -- a $4.4 billion deal for the 2014 through 2020 Olympic Games that the company secured last year.It’s not just the Olympics that bleed funds. Other sports TV franchises that lose money can still be a must-have. DirecTV reportedly still doesn’t make money from its “NFL Sunday Ticket” package, where viewers can see out of marketgames.That costs the satellite programmer over $1 billion a year. But it’s the NFL – the pre-eminent yearly sports TV franchise that not many TV networks can do without because the NFL attracts hard-to-get male and young male viewers in large quantities.Going forward what happens when even more TV networks risk life-and-limb -- and possible profits -- for sports TV? It depends. Surely NBC would will tell you the big summer Olympics events promote a lot of TV programming for the upcoming fall schedule, where viewers will at least sample shows.Is that enough? Local TV affiliates might say so. They also gain handsomely from being able to sell local TV inventory in the NFL, the Super Bowl and the Olympics.The danger in this regard comes from NBC increasingly shifting a lot of its big sports content to digital platforms. For the London Olympics NBC will show every single event live – a huge chunk of it on online platforms.Now, to be fair, much of this won’t garner any substantial viewership to worry local TV stations. Some 95% or more of viewers still like to watch TV the old fashion way -- on a big TV screen setting on a soft, comfy couch.Good news: the same is true for most sports and that can be comforting to TV networks -- at least for the near term.
In TV, the phrase “You are dead to me!” has real meaning. Funeralwise, a site that encourages people to take care of their end-of-life preparations, says there have been scores of bodies piling up in prime-time this season -- some 132 bodies in one week, by one estimate analyzing some 40 shows. But more than other channels, pay cable TV networks disply the grimmest images of dead bodies: Starz’ “Spartacus: Vengeance” gets top honors -- averaging 25 dead bodies -- in each episode, says Funeralwise (Or maybe for the season? Does this include repeats?) Another violent fantasy-theme action show, “Game of Thrones” from HBO, typically tosses around 14 lifeless souls. HBO has had its share of dead body sightings in other shows: “True Blood” and before that “Six Feet Under” which followed the travails of a California family’s funeral business. Overall, Funeralwise says this amounts to some problems. While the media has no problem giving viewers the idea of death, real-life decisions about funerals are generally put off. “There is a clear disconnect between the acceptance of death in popular culture and the acceptance of it in reality,” said Funeralwise director Rick Paskin, according to a blog on the site. So TV is providing a marketing service to the business. Virtually every single crime/legal drama -- broadcast or cable -- seems to start with some sort of suspicious death, which gets solved at the end. Sprinkle in a few mid-episode demises, as well. In addition to regular humans, there are fantasy versions of humans who meet their makers. “The Vampire Diaries” on CW was the deadliest show for non-humans, with 18 vampires killed; AMC's “The Walking Dead” had 16 zombies zombied. Advertisers like these shows because of predictably. CBS talks about solving the mystery, which attracts large amounts of female viewers. Funeralwise says about TV: “Someone is dying about once every 13 minutes, and it's usually not from old age.” But too many dead images in the shows of “Thrones” or “Spartacus” probably wouldn’t work for big TV marketers. The violence level is off the charts versus what hey are use to on ad-supported TV. That said, young-skewing advertisers -- movie marketers, video game publishers, and host of direct marketers -- would probably come on board. Still, we are not too sure all this would move viewers to make more end-of-life plans. TV can do a lot in life. But when you are dead apparently you’re of little use to marketers.
“You’re not watching, you’re iPadding,” is the common lament in our living room now. My wife will respond to something on the TV screen, hoping I will chime in, only to find my nose buried in the iPad or Galaxy Tab. “You’re not even here,” she complains. And she is right. As much as I love the BBC “Sherlock” series running recently on PBS “Masterpiece,” I am going to have to watch them all again -- probably using my PBS iPad app while on my aerobic stepper. No kidding -- that is where I can focus most and best on media now. The living room is just a horror show of distractions. Switching focus from device to TV becomes so tiring and disorienting that at times I just give up on the main screen altogether. A lot of the richer, content-dense TV programming we are getting these days may actually be too good for the evolving circumstances of TV viewing. Researchers at Hill Holliday have found in some very early and tentative work that the level of distraction from TV screens by smartphones and tablets may be even more severe than some suppose. While not a rigorous field test of living room behaviors, they worked with SecondScreen Networks to develop a one-screen simulation of two-screen behavior. Six hundred viewers worked with a player that carried two video streams, one in a larger TV-like window and the other in a smartphone-sized window. In the TV window they ran "Saturday Night Live" sketches broken up by pods of TV advertising. In the TV window they ran segments of movie trailers, including one for the film “Friends with Kids.” The smartphone showed a stream of static images, one of which might include an ad also for “Friends With Kids.” They tested for people viewing TV without a second screen, people viewing both screens without a synchronized second-screen ad prompt and for people viewing two screens synched. The full outline of the research is at the blog by Ilya Vedrashko, who heads R&D at Hill Holliday. Not surprisingly, people watching only one screen had 17% higher recall rates and 12% higher preference rates. The presence of a second screen not only diminished the visibility of TV content but even affected likability. When a second-screen ad was synchronizes with the ad on the main TV screen, however, recall bounced up somewhat by 8% -- but preference rebounded considerably, by 17%. “We have to look at this with cautious optimism,” Vedrashko tells me, because the research is more directional than definitive. He sees the source of the problem as also as a potential solution. “The mobile phone provides another source of distraction.” In fact, it is important to keep second-screen distraction in context. The Middletown Media Study, which helped intrigue Vedrashko about the role of mobile phones in the living room, showed that attentiveness to the TV in a living room is eroded by many things. Almost 29% of daily TV viewing minutes are accompanied by other activities, from talking and texting to attending to or talking with others in the room. But when it comes to mobile phones and devices, he argues, “for the first time it gives us an opportunity to correct for it.” The second-screen ad, if it supports in some way what is going on on the first screen can reconnect the viewer to the message and retrieve them from distraction. Obviously, we need tons more research on TV distraction and the actual ways in which people are using devices during TV time. The first run of research told us that many, many people are using devices while watching TV, but we still don’t know or appreciate what people are doing and the level of distractedness it incurs. My personal experience is that we are looking at a considerable drain on attention. Hill Holliday analyst Rob St. Louis cites the overall cost in attentiveness that comes from task-switching. “When you switch attention, your ability to focus overall decreases,” he tells me. “So the sum of your attention is less than the sum of its parts.” To wit: shortly into “Sherlock” I realize that the effort required of catching up this densely packed series is overwhelming. I decide to focus on the second screen. Part of folk culture around TV is that irritating family member who leaves the room for ten minutes, comes back in and demands that you catch them back up. “What did I miss?” Imagine that happening to one self repeatedly between two screens. Multitasking is a misnomer. We really only focus on one thing at a time, and the process of task-switching is exhausting. This becomes even more interesting as we contemplate a truly two-screen world where both programmers and advertisers have to adjust to the reality of second-screen distraction. While companies like Hill Holliday and SecondScreen -- which does multi-screen ad synchronization -- surely want to make the case for synched ads, the implications creatively are great. The remote control introduced new patterns of content and ad creation over 20 years ago as everyone stayed aware that people impatiently bailed from the boring. Recapturing people from second-screen distraction will have to go beyond a synched ad. “We may have to rely more on auditory cues,” suggests Vedrashko. If we know that people have heads bowed over a second screen then programming and ads may want to use the audio channel that still is present for the non-viewer to draw them back. St. Louis speculates that we may need to make the ad creative more quickly and easily understandable to keep engaged during the ad pods rather than using them as a signal for an email check. Vedrashko suggests that some current children’s programming may already have some of the cadences and patterns that more adult programming will require in a two-screen world. Short attention spans and limited loads on focus are assumed with these audiences. “It is designed with this dynamic in mind.” “Blue’s Clues” was among the first to design around the research insight that kids needed lulls and breaks from high attentiveness in order to do something else and then come back to a TV focus, he says. Hmmm. It is all speculative for now, but the introduction of interactive devices into the living room surely will be as disruptive to the TV medium as anything that came before it. It is hard to image a future where second screening is not a part of the sensibility that goes into programming. While it may not mean that all TV programming takes on the rhythms of “Blues Clues,” the problem of programming and advertising into deeply divided attention spans is worth considering. Parents lament the relentless re-viewings of Disney DVDs and the fiftieth screening of that Cartoon Network favorite. Repetition is such a part of childhood media consumption that one wonders if it becomes a part of distracted adult media habits. After all, here I am having to watch “Sherlock” twice in order to get it. There is, of course, an upside to the second-screen distraction that none of us may have seen coming. It makes it easier for one family member to tolerate programming that would have been insufferable without the reliable distraction of a second screen. “Want to catch up on your ‘Doctor Who,’” even though I find just about anything SyFy offers pretty much unwatchable. My iPad has made it possible for me to sit through evenings of ‘Doctor Who,’ ABC’s “Once Upon A Time” and a relentless run of risible romantic comedies whose titles I erased from memory before they even started. Here is a phenomenon for TV dweebs to ponder. Will second screening make really good programming harder to watch and mediocre or irrelevant programming (for any particular viewer) easier to tolerate?
It is no secret that television viewing is not done in a vacuum and that viewers are distracted by the environment from paying 100% attention to television program. Past findings by media researchers, going back a half a century, have made this an indisputable fact. Therefore, media buyers and sellers accepted the fact that the ratings as provided by Nielsen and (former TV audience researcher) Arbitron and others have over-stated the true dimension of the TV audience. Put another way, as long as we have had commercial TV, viewers had only one eye on the screen for the most part, while engaging in other activities simultaneously. In the "old days" those other activities consisted of people reading magazines and newspapers, snacking and talking while the TV set was on. Today, people are still engaged in other activities, which increasingly are media-centric, especially the digital media kind. The Internet and the fast-paced march of technology – particularly mobile connectivity – have created a new environment in the home. During an afternoon session loaded with presentations from important players such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Viacom and Interpret, a standing room-only crowd at last week’s ARF Board Room were treated to some new views of “the viewers.” No longer is the distraction necessarily a bad thing from the programmer’s – or the advertiser’s – point-of-view. Now, it seems that multitasking may in fact be a good development. Microsoft’s presentation focused on the home, where the living room is still the place where families view most of their TV content. Fully 77% of in-home viewing is done in the living room, but viewers’ attention is now shared by tablets and other mobile devices such as notebook PCs and smartphones. What is most interesting, and actionable, is that the "distraction" is not a bad thing, since some of the activities include actually watching TV on the tablets or other devices, as well as engaging in one form or another of social networking dealing with the shows on the TV. Microsoft urged marketers to take notice of the fact that multitasking can be beneficial, and suggested they should embrace the new technologies and leverage these finding to customize their marketing and commercial messages. Yahoo suggested the exact same thing. Showing credible research conducted by Ipsos ASI (with a sample of some 3,000), they provided evidence that today's TV viewer is, in fact, more engaged than last century viewers. Multitasking by the viewers, while significant - some 80% - can help the advertiser by providing additional and complementary opportunities to present their products and services. Put another way: two screens are better than one. Not to be outdone, Viacom invented a new word: “tabletomics.”. This word is both a noun and an adjective, and it tells us that tablets play a surprising and important role, augmenting the TV viewing experience. Viacom, in support of their multiple channels presented convincing research, consisting of a large random sample and ethnographic research. The net findings were that TV's future is promising, as is the future for tablets. The implications, much like the previous presenters was that new technology, specifically tablets, present a golden opportunity for programmers to develop program materials and take advantage of the inherent synergy with TV. Interpret, took a somewhat broader look at the current multitasking environment. With a presentation entitled, “Utilizing Multiple Screens Effectively: Television’s Role in Mobile Purchasing,” they, nevertheless, came up with similar conclusion: Yes, advertisers can and must do a better job using television to drive purchasing on mobile devices. Consumers are already being influenced by TV, but there is much room to grow. Eighty-seven percent of people have made a purchase in the past year, and 65% of these purchases were for physical products and services. So, far from being a "distraction" mobile devices can actually improve on TV's performance as an advertising tool.
The digital rights groups Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge are siding with Barry Diller's online video start-up Aereo in its dispute with the TV networks. In court papers filed today, the groups asked U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan in New York to deny the networks' request for a preliminary injunction shuttering the start-up. "Although Aereo is the defendant, this case is in fact about the right of individuals -- Aereo’s customers and ultimately all residents of the U.S. -- to watch free local broadcast television with the technology of their choosing," the groups argue in a friend-of-the-court brief. The dispute dates to March, when Aereo launched a $12 monthly service that allows people to watch over-the-air TV shows on iPhones, iPads, Roku and other devices. Shortly before launching, Aereo installed thousands of antennas, each the size of a dime, in various New York locales. Aereo uses those antennas to capture over-the-air broadcasts, creates individual recordings of them for customers' personal use, and then allows customers to play back those recordings with a remote digital video recorder. Aereo argues it need not pay licensing fees because it's only enabling activity that consumers can do for free -- that is, to install antennas, receive TV transmissions, and time-shift with remote DVRs. To make this argument, Aereo draws heavily on a 2008 ruling that endorsed Cablevision's remote DVRs. The TV networks disagree with Aereo's interpretation. Among other arguments, they argue that the pro-Cablevision ruling only applies to technology that allows people to time-shift programs to the same set-top box where they can watch the real-time broadcast. The EFF and Public Knowledge take issue with the TV networks on that point. "A copyright owner has no greater rights when a viewer watches a baseball game on portable TV from a park bench than when he watches on his living-room TV," the groups argue. The industry group NetCoalition also weighed in this week, arguing that a broadly worded ruling in favor of the TV broadcasters could put the legality of cloud computing in doubt. NetCoalition -- made up of Amazon, Bloomberg, IAC (which didn't participate in preparing the court papers), Google, Wikipedia, and Yahoo -- says it isn't siding with Aereo or the TV broadcasters. Instead, the group is urging Nathan to clarify that consumers are allowed to use remote storage systems to ensure that their content will be available on more than one device. "The very reason that consumers use remote storage or backup systems is to ensure that their content will be available to them on multiple devices when they travel away from their local storage devices or when those devices catastrophically fail."
As popular as social media is, many TV viewers still tune into the TV listings on the set itself to figure out what to watch. They also spend a lot of time in the electronic program guide, suggesting that the guide itself can be mined by marketers for untapped ad opportunities. About 94% of homes check out the TV listing grid on a weekly basis, according to data released this week at "The Cable Show" from digital entertainment company Rovi from a sampling of cable operators using Rovi’s interactive guide. Rovi also found that about one-third of all TV viewing time is a result of choices that viewers made from the guide, with the average user interacting with it about 16 minutes a day. Those statistics are incredibly useful for entertainment marketers eager to reach consumers when they are searching for shows to watch. They also underscore that connected TVs are likely to play a role as an ad vehicle in the broader video-any-screen-anywhere trend. Specifically, Rovi said that when it ran a banner ad to drive tune-in to a prime-time premiere one hour before the show, the banner ad in the guide generated a 75% incremental lift in viewership from viewers who were already spending time in the guide during the hour before the show. The study also found that a network running sampling campaigns a few days before a show’s air date generated a 62% increase in viewing with a campaign that linked banner ads to video trailers for the shows.