Rather than displacing television, the internet, including social media is doing an excellent job of building the medium.From an article titled, “
7 Things You Need to Know About Social TV Right Now,’ the writer provides proof:
Back in the summer of 2009, we tracked everything from Sonia Sotomayor (then a nominee for the Supreme Court) to “Glee” to Major League Baseball to “True Blood.”
Over time, it dawned on us that more than anything else, TV was driving social. Sotomayor would trend on Twitter only when her confirmation hearings were being televised; a specific team would trend because it was doing great (or sucking) in the game being broadcast at that very moment on ESPN; during prime-time hours in the U.S. and the U.K., Twitter’s trending topics list would be all but taken over by TV-related chatter.
Why is this? In a word, behaviour.
Social TV is about watching TV with other people — think of “50s-era family and friends gathered around an old Magnavox console to catch “I Love Lucy.” Only now the living room has gone national.
In fact, it’s reversing problems such as time-shifting.
“We did a survey of our 10,000-person TV-fan panel last year,” said TVGuide.com’s Tanner, “and what we found is that 20% of them said they are watching more live TV specifically to avoid “social spoilers.’”
It’s not just TV that’s benefiting from social media, but brand campaigns running on TV as well, such as Old Spice. The brand was resurrected on television and only somewhat later extended to social media. However, had there not been a huge spend on TV, the social media effort wouldn’t have even been considered. Pepsi learned this lesson the hard way last year when they shifted much of their budget away from TV to social media. Pepsi is now in third place behind Diet Coke.
So, contrary to the current crop of vested interest ‘experts’ claiming that traditional media such as TV will give way to social media and that, once again, advertising as we know it is dead, the opposite is happening. Why is this? Why does TV continue to be so dominate? I think there are a couple of reasons. For one,
it’s not about the conversation, it’s about what causes the conversation. And TV is really, really good at that.
For another reason, and not to belabour the point, it’s about behaviour.People understand the internet differently than other forms of media. For one thing other than your hookup, the content is largely free. For another it’s an information medium first, whether that’s checking up on friends or family, or finding out the latest info or price on something you’re interested in.
People fan brands online mainly to get deals. They don’t recommend brands because they like the brand so much as they like their friends and want them to benefit from what’s on offer.As a CEO of an online media company recently
wrote about in Ad Age:
It’s time to face the reality that the Internet sucks as a branding medium. I know that statement will rile up a few people, but I am starting to believe that the Internet may not be the right medium for brand development, at least in its current form. Trust me, it doesn’t help my business if TV dollars don’t come online, but it appears that online advertising is destined to become the greatest direct response medium in history and the greatest branding disappointment ever. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
The thing is, as an advertising medium, the internet and social media have their own value proposition and purpose. It’s an arrow in the quiver, not the whole quiver. It’s up to smart marketers to integrate these tools in the most effective way possible, based on an idea that can be executed across platforms.
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