Two-screen advertising? Yes, but which screen comes first?

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While watching TV, while in front of a TV screen, or more exactly, while being in the room where a TV set is on, people may use a "second screen": another device, laptop, tablet or smartphone. This other device might or might not be connected. TV viewers may tweet, share what they watch or comment on it on Facebook. What shall we call this: "Second screen conversation"? Multiscreentasking? "Extended screen"?

This is nothing new: since the beginning of TV, we know that people multitask while in front of the screen: knitting, reading a paper or a magazine - particularly a TV guide - snacking or having dinner, sewing, making phone calls (TV sound off), doing home work, ironing, cuddling, napping, chatting... you name it. These kinds of "now moments", as Twitter would call them - are lost for advertising. They were, and still are, investigated and taken into account by media time budget surveys as either secondary or primary activities.

From an advertiser's point of view, the perfect advertising time is a full and exclusive TV experience, a total "engagement" as they say in the new media lingo, and, a priori, not multiscreentasking. But, if the people targeted by a commercial interact with a brand via another screen - to ask for a coupon, a sample, to share with friends - such a "now moment"would become the nec plus ultra for branding, memorization, awareness, conversion, etc.
What does this mean for an advertiser? Instead of buying one media, one would buy two "simultaneous" media: a TV commercial AND a social network commercial, on Facebook or Twitter (both Facebook and Twitter provide the same possibilities: comments, check-in, picture, hashtag). Twitter suggests two-screen sponsorships. Facebook, whose reach is much wider, could, in addition, also figure out who is talking to whom (family, friends, unknown people, acquaintances, etc.). Double targeting?

Remarks

• Social networks hope to distract attention and money from TV. Should TV networks help them? 

• Nielsen and Twitter suggest mixing TV audience and tweets in a new kind of advertising "bimetallism". Which is gold, which is silver? Could there be some kind of Gresham's law for programs? Which audience is monetized, by whom? Which media gets the best data from this "bullion"? The social network probably.

• Twitter is trying to set a new advertising principle: "acceleration"- which alludes metaphorically to Newton's second law of motion - to illustrate the amplification of TV's GRPs by tweets. Force of advertising = Mass (TV reach) x Acceleration (number of tweets about a TV program or TV commercial). Could it not also become a formula for a law of distraction with regard to the TV program?

• As for Nielsen, it sets a new Nielsen Twitter social TV rating, or, in their own words, a "Definitive Reach Metric for Social TV Audience Measurement and Analytics" (o.c.). It only takes reach and not frequency into account: so what about GRPs? 

• Twitter insists on real time (synchronised commercials, "now moments" (i.e. live), but how about time-shifted viewing or live + 7 contacts?

• Selon Trendrr, l'activité liée à la télévision est 4 à 5 fois plus importante sur Facebook que sur l'ensemble des autres médias sociaux

• SimulTV claims the best social TV needs only one screen, merging a TV program with social network comments on the sides (cf. infra), like seen with Picture-in-Picture.

Source: PR simultv, May 15, 2013