Report: Facebook & Twitter to Permanently Transform TV Market

LONDON: As the integration of social media and television continues to take an increasing role in the worldwide market, Facebook and Twitter are battling for multi-billion dollar segments of the TV landscape, according to a new report by research company Futurescape.

In its latest report—entitled Social TV: How Facebook, Twitter and connected television transform global TV advertising, pay TV, EPGs and broadcasting—Futurescape discusses how the battle between Facebook and Twitter over social TV is shaping 21st-century television and challenging the industry. Internet-connected television is already arriving in homes across the world, as Google TV, Yahoo Connected TV, CE manufacturers and pay-TV operators are all making a significant push. And this rise in social television means big benefits for the main social networking services. Whichever social media company comes out on top, according to Futurescape, is poised to take a dominant strategic role in socially-targeted TV advertising, pay-TV content recommendation, TV-show marketing, next-generation EPGs and interactive viewing.

Facebook aims to tap into the $180 billion worldwide TV ad market, as Google TV and other connected TV systems will put targeted ads for social media services on TV screens. Global pay TV, estimated at $250 billion in 2014, needs social recommendation and discovery services—which both Facebook and Twitter provide—because these encourage viewers to subscribe to more expensive packages and buy more VOD. Middleware and EPG providers similarly need social network data for recommendation and discovery, and the European EPG market alone will be worth $555 million by 2014. There’s also the issue that buzz generated on Facebook and Twitter affects TV ratings and broadcasters that use the social networks for viewer engagement are effectively sharing their audiences with them. Another benefit is that the social networks know, in real time, how people react to TV programming, which may prove to be an essential supplement to Nielsen-type viewing data.