By Dan Schneier, Marketing and Communications Coordinator
As we know, consumers are interacting and engaging with a second screen while watching major live events like never before. Sunday’s Academy Awards will offer another great case studies in just what Americans will be doing on their smartphones and tablets as the stars walk the red carpet—and how the smartest brands will capitalize on this 2nd screen experience.
February’s first-ever live-streamed Super Bowl was a great indicator of the potential that a second-screen experience offers for advertisers and content providers. On a raw scale, the live-streamed Super Bowl was a great success. 2.1 million people streamed the Super Bowl for a total of 78.6 million minutes. This accounted for more than 37 minutes per person. And there were 12,233 tweets per second during the Super Bowl— tripling last year’s event.
And consumers are not just using the 2nd screen to duplicate their television viewing experience, but rather using devices to further interact with content—and brands. An eMarketer study showed that 41% of searches for Super Bowl ads during the game were on mobile phones and 59% were on desktops. Also, during the Super bowl, 28% of people used their smart phone to visit a Facebook page of a brand whose ad they watched.
As the second major event to be live-streamed in 2012, the Oscars will build on our knowledge about consumers’ live event 2nd screen behaviors. Viewers are directed to go through Oscar.go.com, ABC and the Oscar’s official portal to watch the event live-streaming. On this portal, ABC offers various opportunities to interact with the Oscars---you can make your own picks and track them live as they get selected, search through bios and photos of nominees, and read about Oscar history. Viewers can also watch all of the Red Carpet and pre-Oscars coverage: photos, videos, and blogs all preview the live experience.
As we discussed in our previous blog, consumers are not using traditional television the same way they used to. Rather than passively viewing, they are actively using mobile, tablet, and laptop devices to engage with the content, and also the ads. As we all become more immersed in this multi-screen world, it will be exciting to see how both media companies’ and brands’ live event, multi-screen strategies develop.
Who knows...as the experience evolves, is it too far-fetched to think that eventually we may spend more time engaging with our second-screen than watching the actual product on our television?