Inside look at HBO’s social TV strategy for ‘Game of Thrones’ When HBO’s “Game of Thrones” premiered last year, it was unclear if this drama would appeal beyond the Comic-Con crowd and lovers of the fantasy novels. By the end of season one, everyone was talking about their obsessions with the Starks (one of the main families) and the outstanding performance by Peter Dinklage who went on to win an Emmy and Golden Globe for his role as Tyrion Lannister, of the opposing family. The proof of this popularity is the show’s massive following on the social web.
@GameOfThrones is about to break 300,000 followers, Game of Throne’s Facebook Timeline has over 2,380,000 likes and almost 1 million people have checked-in to the show on GetGlue. This fan base is nurtured and grown carefully by HBO’s social media team on a year-round basis. Not surprisingly, just two days after the second episode of season two aired in the US, the network announced that the show would be returning for a third season. LR: What are the goals? LR: What partners are you working with? #AKASocialTV. #AKASocialTV Introduces #NewhouseSM4 to #SocialTV · anjudd. Do you use other forms of technology (iPhone, iPad, laptop, etc) while watching live TV? NBC’s ‘The Voice’ adds voting via Facebook Timelime app. When NBC’s The Voice airs tonight (Monday), viewers will be able to vote for their favorite contestants via a new Facebook Timeline app, which also works on Facebook’s mobile apps. As they vote, their selection will be shared with their friends, adding another social angle to one of the most social shows on TV.
The app also lets users track their favorite artists and view additional content, such as performance video and blog posts. “This app gives our already socially savvy fans another way to connect and share,” said Vivi Zigler, President, NBC Universal Digital Entertainment. “From declaring their favorite artist to discovering friends’ preferences to interacting with more content, the app creates a fully social online voting experience.” This is Facebook’s first social TV integration of its Timeline apps (that we’ve seen) that goes beyond simply sharing content. Last year, Twitter partnered with FOX’s X Factor to power voting via direct messages.
Screen Shot 2012-04-01 at 9.28.31 PM. Screen Shot 2012-04-01 at 9.27.38 PM. Hulu's Jason Kilar 'Thinks Different' about television. Hulu Chief Executive Jason Kilar chose the advertising agency's conference in Los Angeles to do his own riff on Apple Inc.'s "Think Different" campaign. Instead of saluting "The Crazy Ones" from the memorable TBWA/Chiat/Day ad campaign from 1997 that heralded the rebirth of Apple -- and featured some seminal figures of the 20th century, including Dr.
Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi and Albert Einstein -- Kilar offered his own pantheon of innovators. Kilar saluted those who strove to do better -- including Walt Disney, who conceived of the idea for Disneyland while sitting on a park bench in Griffith Park, watching his daughters ride a merry-go-round; James Dyson, who invented the bagless vacuum cleaner (and brought a sense of industrial design to the bland household appliance), and Steve Jobs, whose iPhone relegated the rotary dial phones to museum pieces. Hulu, said Kilar, strives to bring the same relentless innovation to television.
"TV is one of the most social mediums.... 'American Idol' Curve Ball Gets Lukewarm Reaction From Social TV Fans. American Idol's attempt to mix things up — by having the final 9 singers sing as trios in addition to their individual performances — fell flat Wednesday night among users of Peel's Idol Interactive Experience, a second-screen engagement platform that lets viewers "cheer" or "boo" contestants and judges in real time. Since the live shows began March 15, TV discovery app Peel has been tracking which finalists are most likely to be safe or be eliminated. For Wednesday's performance show, Peel's Idol feature also captured the lukewarm sentiment of the three trios' medleys (see graphic above).
The contestants, mentored this week by Stevie Nicks, sang songs from artists they admired for their solos. Front-runners Phillip Phillips, who tackled Jonny Lang's "Still Rainin'," and Jessica Sanchez, who performed Beyonce's "Sweet Dream," continued their reign at the top of Peel's leaderboard. For two weeks running, one of the bottom three most-booed contestants on Peel was voted off by America.
Young adults embrace social TV. Chyron debuts platform for social TV and second screen. TweetTV Receives $750,000 in Seed Funding to Power its Real-Time Social TV Guide. Login. 2011 MTV #VMA Twitter Tracker. Social TV gives live viewing an edge over time-shifted [with chart] Social TV, in which audiences use social networks while they watch, is causing some viewers to opt for live broadcasts over time-shifted shows, according to a new study from iModerate Research Technologies. The research firm found that more than half (58 percent) of viewers who habitually engage socially while watching television report that they watch more live TV because they need to be part of the conversation in real-time. People in this group, defined as viewers who engage socially ten or more times a week, also are more active consumers and influencers than average.
In fact a third of them said their primary reason for being Social TV viewers was either to give feedback to the television network or show support for their program. Other motivations include the desire to be relevant and recognized, be part of a community, maintain relationships, and to virtually hang out with friends. “Social TV is a huge phenomenon,” said Adam Rossow, vice president of Marketing at iModerate. London 2012 to be the first truly social Olympic Games. If you were blown away by the Super Bowl this year, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
The Summer Games will revolutionize live sporting events as we know them. London 2012 is being heralded as the first truly social Olympic Games in history. There has been a fundamental shift since Vancouver four years ago. Mass adoption of social media, the emergence of social tv “second screen experience” and recent International Olympic Committee policy changes for athletes using social media mean that the conversation will be bigger than ever before. A SXSW panel on this topic included Samsung digital strategist Matthew Moller, Get Glue founder Alex Iskold, whatstrending.com host Shira Lazar and a representative from the US Olympic Committee.New IOC rules essentially mean that, provided they don’t engage in “play by play” of sporting events and are careful with product endorsements, athletes will be able to Tweet, blog and Facebook post their experiences. New Data Is Bringing New Insight To TV Viewing.
At our Marketing Leadership Forum in April, Forrester Researcher Mike Glantz will be talking up TV in its future state with a panel made up of Comcast, ABC, and others. Here is a post written by Mike about his upcoming panel and a report he is working on. Enjoy! Marketers have struggled with accurately measuring their reach across TV and digital media platforms. Today’s TV watchers multitask with digital devices, fluidly moving between platforms and expecting a seamless experience.
In this complex world, marketers need standardized data sets to measure: Cross-platform reach. Earlier this week, Nielsen and Viacom unveiled new measurement tools that could allow marketers to more effectively plan cross-platform media campaigns. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of how marketers must rethink their approach to TV. How are media buyers using new TV data in their marketing strategies?
Are you using any nontraditional data sources in your TV campaign? Thanks, Mike @MichaelGlantz. Data Points: Social Commentary. Chances are if you're an avid TV viewer, you've tweeted about a show at some point. SocialGuide Intelligence, one of a growing number of companies tracking social response to TV content, examined tweets related to 213 channels over a two-day period to see where the action was. Looking at shows by genre, reality TV was the most active, receiving 19 percent of all comments. Series were the most-tweeted program type, receiving more than half the comments, which is in keeping with the volume of programs they represent.
But no one tops sports fans for tweeting activity: Sports events accounted for 37 percent of comments, despite representing just 3 percent of program volume. Infographic: Carlos Monteiro. Matcha launches on the iPad to help TV show discovery. One of the biggest challenges in TV today is finding the content you want to watch.
With the addition of Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon to the already 500-channel universe — and your DVR — discovery is most difficult than ever. Not to mention, content appears in different windows on different platforms. Last year we wrote about Matcha.tv, a TV discovery site that enables users to discover content across Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon and Xfinity. By linking your Facebook, Netflix and Hulu accounts, Matcha can serve up intelligent cross-platform recommendations. And now, Matcha has debuted an iPad app, carrying over discovery features with the ability to watch streaming video through your member services.
Social media is bringing some viewers back to live TV, but the overwhelming trend is in the direction of on-demand playback. Over on Netflix, iTunes and Amazon Prime, TV shows come in seasonal waves. How social media users multitask while watching TV. SocialGuide debuts new TV analytics and engagement tool. It’s a shoot-out in the social TV analytics space these days, with SocialGuide, Trendrr, Bluefin Labs and Networked Insights among those companies battling it out across networks, brands and agencies. SocialGuide has launched a new product called SocialGuide Intelligence (SGI), which it bills as the only social TV analytics and audience engagement platform in the marketplace. Beyond offering social TV reports and ratings for different TV shows and channels, it enables clients to “identify and engage with its social influencers and key comments” from directly within the tool.
“We spent a lot of time meeting with networks and listening to them about how they value their social audience,” founder Sean Casey told us in an email interview. He said they came away with two big takeaways. First, social has value across departments at networks, so SGI was designed to work across research, digital, marketing, social media and production groups. March Madness: Big Upsets Result in Big Social Media Response | Bluefin Labs: Social TV Analytics. ‘Pretty Little Liars’ blows up in social media, as the kids say. US Social TV Company ConnecTV Rolls Out Suite of Innovative "Second Screen" Features for March Madness. Publications Social TV Grows 91% From a Year Ago; Animated Shows like American Dad Hot on Facebook 03/19. February was a big month for social TV chatter, driven by events like the Oscars, the Super Bowl and the Grammys.
In addition, the amount of conversations and check-ins around TV shows has grown 91% year over year, said social TV tracking service Trendrr.tv in a recently released white paper. The last year has seen a slew of programmers from Discovery to Showtime release new and additional social TV apps to promote synchronous viewing, some of which include online video. Plus, there’s been ample attention by media agencies to startups that can track and quantify social buzz around shows and commercials. Such insight can help marketers better understand the true level of engagement and passions fans have in a particular show. Interestingly, audiences for different shows “buzz” about them in various ways, Trendrr.tv found.
Trendrr.tv’s analysis of social engagement includes tweets and posts as well as shared links for video clips.