Facebook offers TV marketers scale and targetability that’s almost unrivaled by other social networks, and Facebook is working to “create great new experiences, drive tune-in and drive value for your business,” said Nick Grudin, Facebook’s strategic partner manager at the Social TV Summit in Los Angeles.
Citing an example of the sheer size of the TV-related conversation happening on Facebook, Grudin explained that during the month of May, social media measurement company Trendrr tracked an average of five times the amount of TV conversation on Facebook than all other social platforms combined.
Complimenting that phenomenon, Grudin referred to the 2013 Academy Awards, where viewers on Facebook discussed vastly different stars, outfits, categories and other topics depending on where they were located and their demographic.
That scale and targetability is still largely untapped, however. “The question is, what do we do about it?” said Grudin.
According to Grudin, the TV industry has the opportunity to drive tune-in and engagement on Facebook primarily through three features: trending stories, crowdsourcing and measuring conversation. The average user has 250 friends on Facebook, he pointed out, “how do you turn each one of them into your marketers?”
The answer, he hinted, is in part using Facebook engagement to create real-time content. Fox Sports, for instance, posed Facebook questions during last season’s college football broadcasts. Responses were collected and addressed on-air by the announcers. The process created real-time content on the second and first screens and each person who participated made all their Facebook friends aware that the broadcast was happening and that they were watching it.
Grudin also brought up Instagram, Facebook’s ever-ascending photo-, and more recently, video-sharing service.
“Instagram captures the world’s moments,” Grudin said, “which isn’t that different from what TV does. It’s just on a vastly different platform.”
Grudin discussed many examples of networks that used Instagram integrations to create a whole new viewing experience for viewers. The American Country Music Awards, for instance, created a red-carpet integration wherein fan photos taken with cutouts of stars Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan went out over the broadcast’s Instagram feed while also getting incorporated into the broadcast itself.
Ultimately, Grudin said, “measurement proves the value” of Facebook and Instagram integrations, and that is still a work in progress. “Connecting social integrations with tune-in – that is where was want to take this.”
Brief Take: While TV marketers are working hard to avail themselves of Facebook’s massive scale and targetability, there’s still plenty that can be done to better harness the social network’s massive marketing power.
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