INSIGHT
SOCIAL TV AND TWITCH:
NEW FRONTIERS FOR MARKETERS?
We as an industry need to learn what’s driving customers now by looking at the growth in social TV
and live streaming event sites such as Twitch, writes iGaming futurologist Mark McGuinness.
BEFORE THE ADVENT of the Internet,
the humble television set in the living
room was the focus of attention in most
households. Families gathered around for
‘content’ in the form of entertainment,
news, and sports events. TV as a medium
still has billions of advertising revenue
spent on it every year. Part of the reason
why is because we, as consumers, tend to
trust what’s advertised on the HD, curved,
or 3D screen TV unit.
We are a society of multi-screeners. Now
we have access to many more TV channels,
catch-up TV and the ability to view live
streaming content on second screens
(smartphones, tablets or laptops) and even
third screens such as smartwatches. The
multiplicity of ‘screens’ of some description
pervades every single aspect or our lives.
In fact, 90 per cent of all our media
of course gambling wallets of consumers?
So what exactly is social TV? Defined
in simple terms, it’s the union of television
and social media, whereby viewers share
their experiences via social channels using
smartphones and tablets, resulting in what
Advertising Age has called: “[A]massive
and rapidly expanding real-time focus
group and promotional force.”
For me, social TV is the continued trend
in entertainment broadcasting content
services. It’s more than broadcasting
yourself as in YouTube; it’s more than the
social communication interaction related
to the context of watching television or
related TV content. Social TV allows the
opportunity for an engagement between
the content producer and the content
consumers. Sure, TV no longer commands
our full attention as it once did. In fact,
“We are witnessing a seismic shift in the social TV
programming content schedule. Who would have thought
that audiences would engage with the highly successful
video gaming concept of POV (point of view)?”
consumption and social interactions today
are screen-based, blurring the lines between
social commerce, mobile commerce
and how we access entertainment, or
infotainment, services.
Could social TV, as it is often referred to,
help the iGaming industry in the neverending battle to win the minds, hearts and
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iGB Affiliate Issue 50 APR/MAY 2015
some analysts now refer to the TV as the
background or indeed the actual second
screen itself. However, TV has become
one of the most common screens that are
used simultaneously with other screens.
Around 77% of our time spent watching
TV is with another device, which recent
market research suggested is 49% with a
smartphone and 34% with a laptop/PC.
We are also witnessing the seismic shift
in the social TV programming content
schedule. For example, who would have
thought that TV audiences would engage
with the highly successful video gaming
concept of POV (point of view)? An
example of POV is Channel 4’s Gogglebox
that launched in 2013, where families
and friends in their living rooms watching
weekly British television shows have
amassed nearly 3.5 million viewers.
At the other end of the spectrum of this
POV style concept we have Twitch, the
live streaming eSports gaming platform.
It’s where gamers watch other gamers play
out the latest League of Legends and other
popular video games. It’s so popular that
Amazon paid close to $1 billion for the
privilege of ownership. It’s not surprising,
as the Twitch platform reached 100 million
monthly viewers in December 2014.
Social TV has grown significantly over
the last few years, driven by the continued
growth in smartphone and tablet
usage, while viewers watch television
and interact via social platforms such
as Twitter with other fans. Twitter is
already the number one destination for
TV content sharing.
Of course, we do have examples
already of winning formats for social
TV and second-screen betting, such as
The Million Pound Drop Live, a BAFTA
Award-winning game show which