Engagement is a buzz word in television marketing, with viewers behaving less and less passively as they seek to discover more about their favorite shows. This takes the form of IMDb, check-in sites, games and second-screen apps. But while consumers may be playing along online, it’s the TV brand’s job to make sure they’re actually staying engaged and not just tuning in.

In Tuesday’s session, “TV Apps Crash Course,” at The Cable Show, network execs talked about the roadblocks and best practices in creating a branded TV app, and perhaps most important, how to keep fans using them.

CHALLENGES:

Moderator Michael Grebb, executive editor of CableFAX, called TV apps “a huge part of engagement, especially when it comes to television tune-in.” But what are the biggest challenges in making an app for an existing TV brand?

Rebecca Rusk Lim, VP of interactive experience at Turner Broadcasting System, says it is simply finding and allocating the resources. “It’s a big investment,” she said. “There’s a lot going on on a lot of different platforms, so you have to be picky about which ones you’re on and where you’ll find the most users.”

Miguel Monteverde, VP of digital media at Discovery, says the biggest challenge is making first contact. “The single biggest challenge we’ve faced is adoption – getting people to actually download it and use the app.”

And once one gets users to download the app, the challenge multiplies tenfold. TV networks need to make sure people continue to engage with the app, and with the TV brand through the app, but that also means that the team needs to constantly be working on the app to ensure its quality is up to par and its content is always changing.

“One of the downsides is that [an app] is a living breathing thing you have to maintain day in and day out,” said Ken Todd, VP of digital content syndication and mobile development at Showtime. “You really need to think long and hard about it before investing and developing it. It’s not just developing it and keeping it up, it’s maintaining it.”

“We have a team of developers doing nothing but updating existing apps so they will function,” said Monteverde. “It’s like playing a game of whack-a-mole.”

WHAT SHOULD YOUR APP INVOLVE?

“Look at what the user would do on that platform,” said Rusk Lim. “What makes the most sense to them?”

Grebb pointed out that though each TV brand wants to serve its consumer base, they must draw a line somewhere. How much does a live stream play into the app’s offerings? Should everything be available on the app, or should networks hold certain content back for on-air only?

“We’re combining both,” said Rusk Lim. “The more engagement we can get, the longer time people spend in the app or spend watching the channel. That’s a win-win. It’s tune-in and engagement – it’s both.”

Ryan Spoon, ESPN’s SVP of digital product development, said that with sports programming, goals for the in-app experience change by the hour.

“We spend a lot of time thinking about what ‘live’ means at different points of the day on different devices,” said Spoon. “In the morning, you might want to see news and analysis. Midday, catch up on news, and then at night, in-game highlights and score delivery.”

He also noted that the fantasy sports experience sometimes becomes a user’s first screen, which changes what ESPN will want to include on the app as viewers might be seeing the actual game on a competitor’s network.

PUSHING ENGAGEMENT:

However, they all agreed, when a TV brand can create an app that encourages viewers to engage with their brands outside of live viewing in the living rooms, the app can automatically market the network as well as the show for them. For example, Discovery has seen the app experience translate into longer viewing time on air. “You see unbelievable engagement, people watching your TV program significantly longer than they would be without the app,” said Monteverde.

For Showtime’s Sync app, it’s vital to promote the network with the app and vice versa.

“When you think of a sync app you think of a live viewing experience, but with a huge portion of our viewers time-shifting, we have to factor in how people watch,” said Todd. Showtime Sync uses content recognition within the app itself to give viewer feedback on what they’re viewing – whether live, recorded or on a DVD. He stressed that the app has to be available and just as engaging when a program is on as when a fan is simply browsing for content. Timing is just as important as the content, according to Todd. The information you push out to users before a new episode should be entirely different from what is released during the show or as the credits roll.

“Then we enable every piece of content to be shared across platforms,” said Todd. “We’re trying to engage these superfans, super users, who then become evangelists for our programs.”

“Social has been such a huge part of driving traffic on apps,” said Regina O’Brien, SVP of marketing at Golf Channel. “We have to be a lot smarter about how we market and how we drive engagement to our apps.”

SUCCESS STORIES:

At Turner, March Madness is one of the busiest times of the year. Viewers can have up to four games playing in the same room with a combination of on-air, live streams and app usage. This year, Turner saw 70 million streams on mobile devices.

“Research last year said that for people watching together, whether in the same room or on social media together, they actually watched a bit longer than for people on their own,” said Rusk Lim.

Though it’s not quite a live sporting event, the annual Puppy Bowl is certainly marketed as one. Discovery’s Monteverde says that it’s become a pop-culture phenomenon with more than 13.5 million viewers last year. Seeing the challenge as how to treat a game filmed months ago as a live event, they reached out to focus groups, where the resounding answer was to create a fantasy game associated with the puppy stars.

“People got really into this,” said Monteverde. “It gave the sense that this was a live experience, and it was not something you would do watching the show on DVR a few days later.”

Discovery also has the 24/7 stream, Animal Planet LIVE, which is compared of sponsored cameras turned on puppies, kittens, penguins and other animals around the world.

“You could say this is competitive because you’re not watching our linear networks,” said Monteverde, “but there are younger viewers accessing content via these other devices, so we need to be there, and not just there with our current programming, but with new types of programming that perhaps appeals to a new type of viewer. This isn’t just puppies for puppies sake, this is about building our audience.”

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