Who is leading the way in cross-screen advertising?
Four years ago Google announced a new strategy – that it was now a ‘mobile-first’ company. Digital marketers across the globe sat up and took notice. Every year since then, the digital community has announced that the coming 12 months would be the 'year of mobile’. 2010 may have been slightly premature, but Google was onto something.
Lyndsay Menzies
At the launch of Facebook’s IPO in May 2012, despite having over 500 million monthly mobile active users, it made $0 in mobile ad revenue. Two years on, revenue from mobile advertising now accounts for over 53 per cent of Facebook’s total advertising revenue. Facebook is certainly taking mobile seriously.
And what about Twitter? According to its latest report, three in five Twitter mobile users are on Twitter while watching TV. Impressive. But, to put that stat in perspective, around 25 per cent of the UK population is on Twitter, so the majority of tweets come from a relatively small proportion of mobile users. But this is where Twitter comes into its own. Where Google and Facebook succeed from a revenue perspective, Twitter is the closest at cracking social TV, and harnessing the opportunities presented from the second screen, all thanks to the power of the hashtag.
This multi-device growth, and the obsession with social media, has effectively necessitated the need for digital campaigns to stretch across multiple screens in order to engage audiences on the right device, at the right time.
This is particularly relevant for UK millennials. A recent Ofcom study showed that 44 per cent of younger people regularly use a second screen, such as a mobile or tablet device, when watching TV, and 72 per cent of under 25s comment on programmes via social networks (Digital Clarity). But where the UK ‘social TV’ surge is being led by millennials on social media, the polar opposite is happening in the US.
During this year's Super Bowl, sports fans generated 24.9m tweets about the competition, and around 50 per cent of the nationally televised commercials contained hashtags that encouraged people to tweet. Even on prime time TV shows, the hashtag is prominent throughout the duration of the show, and on popular chat shows, there are often live discussions about things that happened on Twitter during the week.
So who is leading the way when it comes to cross-screen advertising? Twitter cite Ben and Jerry's and Domino's Pizza as the two brands making good headway. Ben and Jerry’s wanted to combine Twitter with TV, to encourage ice cream fans to submit suggestions for a new flavour. Using Promoted Tweets, Ben and Jerry’s asked users to submit flavour ideas with the #MyBenandJerrys hashtag. The content was based around what was popular on TV, (including shows such as the BBC’s ‘The Great British Bake-off’) and being real-time and reactive. Similarly, Domino's wanted to engage TV viewers using Twitter, and drive awareness of its #BigNightIn campaign. Domino's used different messaging to test what resonated best with TV audiences, including jokes and images.
The publishing sector is also embracing multi-screen viewing and engagement. Back in January, the BBC launched iWonder, a new content platform featuring interactive guides. iWonder’s interactive guides focus on three screens – desktop, mobile and tablet. Why has the BBC gone down this responsive design route? The corporation said that for the first time this past Christmas, the proportion of people visiting the BBC food website from a tablet or smartphone was larger than those visiting from a PC. In essence, the BBC wanted a new format that provides all the qualities of this class of highly immersive story, but tailored for every device.
The BBC isn't alone. In June 2013, Channel 4 launched a second screen app called 4Now to allow real-time viewer interaction. The app offers viewers real-time votes, games and quizzes – and enables advertisers to target them with interactive ads synchronised with the broadcaster's commercial breaks.
The advancements in technology have also enabled the growth of multi-screen advertising. A recent trend has seen creative brands use their smartphone to control another device. This ‘flick to screen’ technology is the perfect tonic for audiences that want an immersive, interactive experience. A good example is Enjoyyourprivacy.com, from the team at Norton. It’s a fantastic cross-screen production that highlights what might happen if you leave your devices unprotected.
Whilst ‘flick to screen’ might be a new trend for most, many businesses have been working in the digital shadows to make this the future of TV. Dial-multiscreen.org, a project backed by global brands such as Netflix, Google, BBC, Hulu and others, is pushing 'flick to screen’ technology, allowing discovery and discussion to take place on a second screen device.
Will it thrive? Technology allowing, cross-screen advertising could make huge advancements in 2014. Mobile content consumption and multi-screen use has never been higher, so the platform is already in place. People have always done things during TV ad breaks, and multi-tasked during programmes – maybe using a second screen is just the new behaviour that propels social TV into the mainstream.
Lyndsay Menzies is CEO of 8 Million Stories