“Social is the new black,” asserted Ben Silverman, CEO, Electus, to Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood” in a lunchtime interview at yesterday’s Social TV Summit at the Belair Country Club. The point is it goes with everything. Well, almost. Later discussion among panelists tended to gravitate toward sports and reality genres as most productive for social TV.
What’s the point of “social TV”? NBCU’s Peter Naylor drove it home when he defined the goal of social TV to be “attracting and growing audiences that attract and grow audiences.”
The conference had a recurring theme of revisiting the question of “what is ‘social TV’?” There were several answers, but Tunerfish’s (Comcast’s internal start-up) John McCrea said it very well. There are two very important problems viewers need to solve. First, it is harder than ever to discover great stuff that’s there. Social media are uniquely suited to solve that problem well via friend “likes,” recommendations and sharing. Second, there is a compelling need to connect to relevant audiences quickly for economic survival. Again, social is very effective at this.
McCrea spoke to what he called the “virtuous cycle of social TV,” which encompasses:
- Discovery: seeing what friends are watching can change your behavior
- Consumption: deeply integrated into devices that control the TV
- Sharing: check-in
Much of the activity and current initiatives around social TV are occurring at the network and content owner level. However, BIA/Kelsey sees social TV becoming an important mix in local TV offerings along with on-air, online and mobile advertising.
The sessions can be viewed at http://socialtvsummit.com/watch-live/.
Rick Ducey is the managing director for BIA/Kelsey. He is an expert in digital media innovations, competitive strategies, new product development and new business models, including digital ecosystem collaboration strategies.
Ducey oversees the firm's consulting, research and advisory services areas. He is also the program director for BIA/Kelsey's Video Local Media advisory service. This program provides coverage and analysis of how online, mobile and broadcast video technologies, competition, shifting consumer demographics and media usage trends are driving changes in the media ecosystem and SMBs and other advertisers can be successful in the new environment. Ducey assists clients with their business planning and revenue models, strategic research, market assessment, and designing and implementing digital strategies. He is also a cofounder of SpectraRep, one of BIA�s companies, which sells a patent-pending IP-based alerting system that he co-invented.
Prior to joining BIA in 2000, Ducey was senior vice president of NAB's Research and Information Group. In this position, he was in charge of the association�s new technology assessment, audience and policy research, strategic planning and information systems, including all Internet operations, and he also developed publications and seminars.
Before joining NAB in 1983, Ducey was a faculty member in the Department of Telecommunication at Michigan State University where he taught and did research in the areas of emerging telecommunication technologies and strategic market research. He also served on the graduate management faculties of George Mason University and George Washington University in telecommunications management and the University of Maryland, where he taught strategic market management and research methodologies. Ducey was selected as the Spring 2011 Shapiro Fellow at George Washington University where he teaches entrepreneurship in new media. He has published a number of research articles and papers in these areas and serves on editorial boards of leading scholarly journals in the communications field. He has also worked at radio stations WSOQ-AM/WEZG-FM and Upstate Cablevision in North Syracuse, New York.
Ducey received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University, M.S. from Syracuse University and B.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
I thought “Frugal was the new black,” per Steve Boal, coupons.com