• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 17, 2014

Starcom MediaVest Group and Twitter this morning released findings from what they’re calling a “Social TV Lab” researching the impact Twitter is having on the way consumers watch TV programming and advertising. The project, which utilized a variety of research sources (Nielsen, Datalogix, etc.) found four big trends. Not surprisingly, all were very positive for Twitter:

1. Twitter + TV = Increased Brand Awareness vs TV Alone. For brands that used Twitter alongside their TV advertising, the study found on average a 6.9% increase in awareness for exposed audiences and significant increases for exposed and engaged audiences across awareness, intent and favorability measures.

2. Twitter Amplification = Sales Lift. For the brands that measured sales impact, we saw sales increases of 4% on average in households exposed to ads on Twitter and TV vs just TV ads alone.

3. The Twitter / TV Multitasker is Here – and TV Ad Recall is High for them. Only one quarter of tweeting occurs during the ad break, and it was highest during reality shows (27%). This supports existing Twitter research that found viewers who are actively engaging in social media while viewing TV are genuinely paying attention to both screens as TV show tune away is less and ad recall was higher for TV Twitter multitaskers. Our results found that television ad recall was also 13% higher among Twitter users versus non-multitaskers.

4. Real-Time TV Content Engagement is on Twitter. Tweeting about events/shows is higher (20%) than “general browsing” about a specific event/show (15%.) In addition, most tweeting happens when something in show/game/ad is worthy of a tweet (70%).

“Twitter, in a very short period of time, has gone from experimental to essential and there's no better place for marketers who want to reach both influencers and their followers during the biggest live, public and conversational moments,” SMG CEO Laura Desmond said in a statement announcing the findings.