Advertisers need to “move to ‘push’ content” for 2nd screen

Use of mobile devices could transform advertising and second screen devices could be made to work in harmony with TV, but there is a pressing need for marketers to deliver content and applications that can effectively be ‘pushed’ to second screens, according to Charlie Hunter-Schyff, head of global ad sales effectiveness, Telefonica Digital, speaking at the Future TV Advertising Forum in London this morning.

Branded TV still has a key role to play in delivering effective marketing for brands, said Hunter-Schyff, delivering a keynote presentation at the event. He said that while other devices were increasingly being used to watch TV, often these devices were being used for supplementary viewing such as live sporting events from different angles. Citing figures to support the argument that viewing was rapidly moving to mobile platforms, Hunter-Schyff said that the Olympic Games saw 30 million BBC iPlayer requests via mobile devices. iPlayer had seen 282% growth on tablets and 90% growth on mobiles, he said. There had been 211% growth in mobile video ad spend between the middle of 2011 and the middle of 2012, he said.

Tablet use for TV viewing had grown 62% year-on-year and other devices had shown strong year-on-year growth in TV viewing, said Hunter-Schyff. However, most viewing on such devices was ‘pull’ viewing. It was key for marketers to drive content that could be pushed to users, he said. To further this, there was need to develop fully integrated mobile and TV ad campaigns. Such campaigns had already been developed for brands like Honda, but these relied on second screen synchronisation. This was demanding and difficult. “However, we’ re not too far from this push synchronisation being accepted,” he said. Adverts on TV bringing phones to life through the use of synchronised content produced an immediate reaction from users. “Use of push will really give us traction,” he said.

Mobile video ads seemed to be more effective than traditional TV in terms of measureable metrics including general recall, brand recall and message recall, said Hunter-Schyff. “Mobile data will help you plan and evaluate TV advertising,” he said. “Mobile data can provide hour-by-hour information about people’s habits and movements,” he said.