Oh how Shakespeare would have loved cinema! - Derek Jarman
The ballpark definition of second screen mobile apps (or companion apps) means using another device while you’re watching TV, to interact with what you’re seeing and find out more about it.
Second screen mobile apps seem to have taken a well crafted page from the masterful practices of late Italian -Renaissance Commedia dell’Arte. And that page is audience interaction and involvement.
Now you might immediately interject with 2 things. The first one would be that many TV shows and theatre plays used audience interaction to give a far more immersive and powerful narrative experience for a very long time. The second thing you might add would be that second screen apps aren’t that new.
You’d be right on both points. But! Second screen apps are still yet to be mass-adopted by television networks and TV channels. The second ,,but” would be that interacting with the audience required their physical presence.
The story we’ll tell today will be how users react to TV content and smart devices and how all of them can blend into one holistic and great experience.
First of all, let’s take a quick look at mobile, web and TV usage in a nutshell in the US.
From this we can easily gather that mobile usage has nearly doubled in just 2 years while web and TV have stagnated. We could come up with a 1000 reasons why this happened but we could sum them up into just one : mobile devices are easy to use, fun, quick, personalized and we can take them anywhere to do most of the things we could do with a desktop or a laptop. But as we’ll show you, mobile devices aren’t the natural enemy of TV’s.
Let’s see how companion apps can actually bridge and connect TV usage with mobile devices. If we were to average out studies and numbers, we’d come to a situation where 8 out of 10 people use other devices when watching TV. Out of those, some nearly half (depending on different surveys and countries) are browsing for products spotted in a show or ad, do some research about actors and movies and so on. In any case, we can see that the numbers aren’t negligible.
Most TV networks or channels are required by their sponsors to integrate 15 to 30 minutes of ads in their programs per hour. That means that if you’re planning to watch an hour and a half movie, you’re going to have to watch the same ads for another hour and a half . Even if some ads are fun and entertaining, who has the patience to watch ads on repeat mode for 1,5 hours? It’s disruptive, distant and fragments engagement.
Mobile users aren’t known for their patience, more so in this day and age when we’ve become used to instant access to information. We want to watch the movie, especially when we’re engaged with the characters and story and then suddenly an ad appears on the screen trying to sell you headache pills. For the headache the ad just caused and interrupted the movie. But there’s a way to merge disruptive ads into creative and interactive audience participation.
First of all, by offering content info (such as movie descriptions or production goofs) between show sessions.
In traditional theatre, much like modern and traditional TV’s, the viewer is a passive observer. We don’t participate in the action and we can always leave or click the off button. The innovation of second screen apps stand to revolutionize the concept of maintaining a dialogue between audiences and content providers.
It’s like combining the encyclopedia of the internet into a virtual amphitheatre where viewers are part of the show and can talk with each other without spoiling the action.
Let’s emphasize some cool features of second screen apps:
When it comes right down to it, companion apps can merge naturally with television and TV shows, networks and channels stand only to benefit, both in terms of audience engagement and increased revenue.
If there’s one thing mobile users have shown to like, that’s personalised and tailored ads to their preferences. That and the fact that mobile users in a way become their own marketers when they can select the content relevant to them and leads to make them more incentivized about ads and in-app events. Which is one of the main reasons why typically mobile device users are more engaged with mobile ads than other traditional ads like web pop-ups on a desktop.
The need for interactivity with stories was always there. From Renaissance actors mingling with the crowds and bringing audiences into a play, storytelling is one of the oldest arts in our history, conditioned by nothing more and nothing less than our need to learn and experiences narratives.
The companion app industry is a powder keg of opportunities for developers and 2013 can be the year where it matures into a fully fledged market. Ironically, by taking a few steps back into the past and taking a lesson from theatre, second screen apps can take the TV viewing experience into a brave new world.
What’s your take on companion apps and which features would you like to see? What market opportunities can they provide?
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,,Related article: Social TV and second-screen viewing: the stats in 2012″
,,Related article: Why The “Second Screen” Industry Is Set To Explode”
