Trends : The top 8 current and future trends in social TV / KIT digital

Here is what KIT digital believes are the top 8 current and future trends in social TV

Consumer behaviour

1. Of the approximately 300m public comments made online across the world today (two thirds of them on twitter) some 10m of them are related to TV
2. Social activity during TV’s prime time has skyrocketed 193% since just last year. That kind of growth means programmers are looking at social-media chatter not just as an amplifier of TV programming but as content in its own right

Social advertising  on TV

1. 30 second ad spots on TV will morph into ‘social intermissions’ and will be tailored to enhance different types of programming. Watching TV is a “lean back” experience and how much we want to lean back depends on our relationship to the content. Sports and reality game show programming has lots of timeouts and other breaks in the action and perfect for facilitating conversations around the game. With drama programmes for instance, a great opportunity for advertisers would be sponsored conversation around a just-viewed show
2. Social Intermissions may be welcome by consumers, and rather than blaring jingles, brands could use this time to become part of the conversation and engage viewers around the content they’re watching or at the very least around some sort of social action they can take on the second screen (a poll, a game, voting on a multiple-choice question, a chance to buy some of the merchandise they just saw)

Technology

1. Faster broadband and connected consumer devices are all coming together to drive social TV which was named one of the 10 most important emerging technologies by the MIT Technology Review. Social TV experiences will constantly evolve along with technology: voice recognition, virtual keyboards and the like are rapidly approaching a level where they work seamlessly enough to allow for mass adoption and ease of use
2. Currently, most social TV apps lack two very basic but very crucial functions: the ability to use the app to change the channel and to record a show for future viewing. For either of these functions to work, the app and the viewer’s set top box must be integrated. In the near future we’ll see thee bigger pay TV providers licensing some of the technology from social TV app makers and bundling it up with the proprietary systems they’ve created

Business models

1. While social TV apps continue to crop up like proverbial weeds, the future of the social TV app will likely be a proprietary social EPG (electronic program guide) provided by the same company that supplies your pay TV servic
2. The rapid adoption of IP-delivered video makes natural social TV interaction possible. (As opposed to the artificial social interactions created by check-ins, tweets and other actions that detract from the lean back experience.) Content providers and advertisers who use this to create unique and useful social TV experiences will be the big winners. Pay TV operators who provide their customers with the most advanced social TV options will attract the best content and the most advertisers to because they’ll be the ones attracting the most viewers.

For further information / with Social TV guru,  Alan Wolk at KIT Digital, please call  0203 0472403