How TV advertising can benefit from the second screen

Two weeks ago I was invited in a Belgian radio show to talk about the future of television advertising. A big Belgian broadcaster decided to drop one of their formats because more than 20% of the viewers were recording the show, watched later and skipped advertising. Because of this consumer behavior, the revenues for the TV station were decreasing and the ROI of the show is too low. This opened up a whole debate about the future of TV advertising.

During this discussion, I started to wonder what the role of the ‘second screen’ could be. Many people watch TV while their smartphone or their iPad is close by. This could create new opportunities for TV advertising.

Here are some of my thoughts on this:

– A quick Twitter check learned that consumers tend to switch less between TV stations during commercial breaks because they check their social media at that time. The higher the adoption of social media, the lower switching between commercial breaks, could be a first quick conclusion.

– Next to that, TV stations can attract new viewers because of social conversations. In a recent study, we learned that media is the number 1 conversation topic on Twitter. People tweet about the stuff they see on TV. Some stations facilitate this discussion by mentioning the #tag during the show.

– The second screen offers the possibility to add additional content for your viewers. Creating apps that increase the relevance of a TV show is a possibility. This app can contain relevant advertising messages.

Do you see other benefits for TV stations because of the second screen in the living room. Please let me know. This will certainly be part of the ‘future of advertising’ discussion, so really interested in hearing your thoughts on this. Thanks!