Second screen gems: How to adapt to television viewers’ divided attention

Ratings giant Nielsen recently announced that it will soon begin monitoring conversations on Facebook about more than 1,000 television programs. In addition, Nielsen added that it will soon start measuring Instagram TV chatter as well. These moves build upon the company’s three-year-old “Nielsen TV Twitter Rankings” to create the new “Nielsen Social Content Ratings.”
Nielsen’s Social Content Ratings are just the latest indication that watching television is no longer entirely passive. Generally, when we’re sitting in front of a TV screen, we keep at least one other device nearby to tell our social media connections what we think about what we’re watching. In fact, a recent study by Accenture revealed that 87 percent of consumers use a companion device while watching TV. Not surprisingly, smartphones are the most common of these devices, being used by 57 percent of TV viewers overall and 74 percent of 14- to 17-year olds worldwide.

It’s clearly a different world than the pre-Internet era, when a given show’s only real competition was the other networks (and when I was a kid in the pre-remote era that meant getting off the couch to change the channel). Today, with the audience’s attention divided not just among multiple networks, but among multiple screens, there are complex implications - and they present challenges and opportunities for nearly every business. Here are just a few examples:

• While few of us create content for TV, those who do – whether from major studios or local newsrooms – should remember that audience members no longer just sit back and consume content; they want to be active participants. The good news is that they’ll comment online even if they’re not asked to do so; the bad news is that these comments won’t always be positive. You can’t control this, of course, but you can influence it by giving the audience some prompts. Inviting interaction via hashtags and polls is a good start, but it’s become more common – and, therefore, less likely to stand out. To truly get the audience’s attention, make them part of the story by letting them influence what content you produce and crediting them accordingly. Doing this makes your story their story, too – making it much more likely they’ll want to share it with others.
• Advertisers should remember that the audience’s threshold for boring, irrelevant content of any kind has never been lower, and it continues to get lower every day. Why, after all, would we watch a poorly-produced, untargeted ad when we’re holding a device in our hand that gives us access to any content we choose? As a result, getting the audience’s attention isn’t easy even with a strong ad, but it still is possible. Doing so starts with a laser focus on your audience and a commitment to producing unique, timely, and – especially important in the two-screen environment – sharable messages. Consider this: a Google TV spot about animal best buddies, entitled “Friends Furever,” garnered more than 6 million shares in 2015. That’s a lot of free advertising – especially at a time when consumers are looking for ways to shut out advertising altogether, as evidenced by the number of consumers going all in with streaming services like Hulu and Netflix.
• Even if you don’t produce content or ads for TV, you can still be part of the conversation. The key is walking a fine line between understanding what people are likely to be talking about in the moment and staying true to your brand. One famous example of this is Oreo’s “You can still dunk in the dark” Tweet, which aired during the Super Bowl XLVII power outage, making cookies part of the conversation. Proceed with caution, however: doing this well requires quick action, good judgement, and – most importantly – an audience receptive to your brand. You don’t have to have as many fans as Oreo, but if you have few followers you won’t likely get much response. Worse yet, if you have more detractors than supporters, it can backfire quickly.

As indicated by Nielsen’s increasing focus on social media, television content is now just one side of a two-way conversation with the audience. And while the second-screen environment certainly presents new challenges, it also multiplies the opportunities. After all, if everybody’s talking about what’s on TV, shouldn’t they be talking about you?