Report: Twitter Impacting TV Viewing, Ad Campaigns

NEW YORK: Twitter and Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) have unveiled the first results from their Social TV Lab initiative, which finds that the microblogging service is impacting the way consumers watch TV programming and advertising.

Among the significant findings is that using Twitter along with a TV advertising campaign increases brand awareness versus just using television alone. For brands that used Twitter alongside their TV advertising, there was an average 6.9-percent increase in awareness for exposed audiences and a significant increase for exposed and engaged audiences across awareness, intent and favorability measures. For brands that measured sales impact, they saw an increase of 4 percent on average in households exposed to ads on Twitter and TV compared to just TV ads alone.

TV ad recall is also higher for those multitasking by using Twitter while watching television. Only one quarter of tweeting actually occurs during the ad break, the report finds, and it was highest during reality shows. This research supports existing Twitter findings that says that viewers who are actively engaging in social media while watching TV are genuinely paying attention to both screens. Also, the report finds that TV ad recall was 13-percent higher among Twitter users versus those not multitasking with the service.

Another finding from the Social TV Lab study is that tweeting about events/shows is higher (20 percent) than "general browsing" about a specific event/show (15 percent).

Laura Desmond, the CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group, said: “TV has become a social, multiscreen experience. At the same time, Twitter, in a very short period of time, has gone from experimental to essential and there’s no better place for marketers who want to reach both influencers and their followers during the biggest live, public and conversational moments. With the Social TV Lab, we are able to marry these two incredible platforms to get better consumer data, trend info and audience insight to feed into planning and modeling to make better decisions for our clients. Building our expertise in Twitter’s real-time platform and demonstrating the marketing ROI of TV + Twitter gives us a competitive advantage in the evolving digital media landscape.”

“Our relationship with SMG is based on collaboration and a desire to help the biggest brands in the world understand the process of planning, buying and measuring their marketing spend, especially how the combination of TV and digital spending improves outcomes,” added Adam Bain, the president of revenue at Twitter. “We’re thrilled to be sharing the first of many social TV insights from our strategic partnership with SMG.”