JOIN USSpecialist digital marketing agency Digital Clarity on Tuesday published a survey of 1,300 British mobile Internet users below the age of 25 which showed that most use a mobile device to talk to friends about the show they are watching.
The Social TV trend exposed by the study could change the landscape for broadcasters and advertisers chasing youthful eye for on-screen attention, Digital Clarity said in a statement.
Eight out of 10 respondents to the poll said they used Twitter, Facebook or other mobile applications to actively comment on shows and chat with their friends as they watch.
“Up until 12 months ago, TV was struggling to reach the younger market as more and more channels were becoming available,” Digital Clarity founder Reggie James said. “Social TV has changed this completely by turning programmes into online events where you have to watch them as they happen.” The significance of Social TV is not lost on the television networks which have found themselves with a new marketplace and a different pitch for advertisers, Digital Clarity said.
A joint Nielsen and Yahoo study in the US last year found that the trend was already well established across the Atlantic with over 86 per cent of mobile internet users choosing to communicate with each other in real time during broadcasts, Digital Clarity said. One of the key findings of the study was that Social TV is popular because it allows youth to instantly comment on their favourite shows to friends via the web or mobile phones.
The British survey discovered that the most common way to communicate is to use Twitter (72 per cent), followed by Facebook (56 per cent) and mobile applications (34 per cent), while 62 per cent of Social TV users like a combination of all three.