• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, April 20, 2010

At the MediaPost Email Insider Summit, an NBC executive said research shows a slew of people used mobile devices to supplement their TV watching of the Olympic Games in February. Hayle Chun, a digital media specialist in the sports and Olympics business, said nearly half of people accessing NBC's mobile content did so while watching TV.

They may have been too lazy to reach for the computer, but they also apparently used a handheld device to access biographies of athletes, country profiles, perhaps explanations of curling, as well as videos. Much of that could have been prompted by the TV coverage.

“The idea that your mobile content needs to be framed in a way that isn’t just for people out at bars, out at restaurants, but for people engaging at home was (surprising) for us and it offers a secondary opportunity for us in terms of the synergies with TV,� Chun said.

That includes selling multi-platform ad packages that can allow campaigns with some sort of messaging where TV and mobile are synched.

If people access Olympics information online when they aren't tuning in to TV -- say at work -- there is some evidence mobile offers a different dynamic.

“In a way that online ends up sort of being the opposite of TV patterns, you see that mobile actually mirrors TV patterns," Chun said. "For advertisers, we think that the opportunity is there for real synchronicity in terms of (TV-mobile) messaging."

London calling? The Summer Games will be there on NBC in 2012.