An earlier post was all about the (UK) Ofcom Communications Market Report and the way in which TV and social media campaigns can work in tandem.

Deloitte has now looked into this as well, releasing a report to coincide with the upcoming Edinburgh Television Festival.   Deloitte commissioned research among 4000+ adults, and found that, as much as people like myself talk about ‘social TV’, only 7% of those polled had become fans of their favourite programmes.

At the same time, the generational shift that Ofcom found in its research, also comes into play here.   Among 18-24 year olds, 46% liked their favourite shows on Facebook.

Also, Deloitte’s research is about actively liking a programme, there is of course a stage before that of people simply tweeting about live TV while its taking place, or exchanging Facebook / IM messages about it.

TV ads skipped by 86%

Another reason why combining online +TV could become more attractive for brands could come down to 86% of viewers with PVRs skipping ads. This is the result of a second Deloitte study conducted to coincide with the Edinburgh TV Festival.

In fact, it’s younger viewers, the very ones likely to be online, who are more receptive to advertising messages.   Deloitte found that while a third of over 55s said that no form of advertising impacted them, only 13% of under 25s felt the same.

Image – ccharmon

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The other week Twitter reported that the record for the number of tweets per second was broken, when there were 3283 during the Japan / Denmark match at the World Cup.

Surprisingly, even though Twitter says on its blog that the final Spain – Netherlands match “represented the largest period of sustained activity for an event in Twitter’s history”, the actual number of tweets per second for Spain’s winning goal was lower at 3051.

However, the World Cup again shows that while Foursquare is still in danger of being a Second Life style phenomenon that is popular and fizzes out, Twitter has found several real and useful roles.

One is that so-called influencers who are able to take conversations elsewhere over-index on it.   Another is that it comes into its own during live TV events – such as the World Cup – where the shared social experience adds to what you are watching on the box.

Twitter has produced a number of interesting infographics.   The wordle image below is the final Spain goal in tweets and in different languages:

And finally, an image showing how Twitter use grew during the competition itself (click on image for larger size):

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Hubspot has a useful graphic that makes sense when you think about it, but is still useful when someone comes to you asking for a Facebook page with 10,000 fans by next month.   The most popular Facebook pages according to Hubspot, involve movies, TV shows, popular books, bands and so on.

And at the bottom of the scale we have Govt pages, musicians (I guess unknown ones?), local businesses and Govt public services.

In fact, Inside Facebook says that entertainment sites are now driving a larger proportion of traffic to the social network, helped along by Facebook’s ‘like’ button that it unveiled the other month (and that I’ve finally got around to installing myself).

Inside Facebook quotes Compete stats that show that the whole boycott Facebook campaign over privacy issues was something of a non-starter, and probably a discussion point only among the minority of us that read the social media and tech press – in the US at least, Facebook gained 2.1 million new visitors in May.

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The PBS Media Shift blog has some interesting points about the UK web election that wasn’t….well once you get past the 1st paragraph anyway (“The British still consume high tea and scones….” enough said).

PBS links to BBC’s tech correspondent Rory Cellan Jones who says, “this was not an Internet election, and all those who suggested it might be had got it completely wrong.   It was a television election, and all of those tweeters and bloggers were sad political obsessives talking to each other.” Guilty as charged, those of us pontificating on Twitter about the election were largely preaching to the already converted.

Actually the following chart (produced before the election ended) by Echo Research should be a wake up call for all of us who make a living out of predicting the death of old media.   Sure, 48% of UK voters were influenced by the Internet…while 60% were influenced by newspapers and 85% by TV.

At the same time, the websites of all mainstream media outlets – TV and newspapers, saw a rise.   This points towards something that I for one believe is true – the delivery mechanism of the news might be different, but ultimately people still want it from trusted brands.

Spoof campaigns such as the Facebook group ‘vandalised Conservative Billboards‘ were more popular than the official party efforts, but you wonder to what extent they didn’t just amplify what was coming out of the echo chamber.

Social media effort from the UK election - vandalised Conservative posters on Facebook

As Jaron Gilinsky who wrote the PBS piece says, “now is the time for the various players to absorb the lessons from this election, and get back on the bike.   Perhaps in five years time, the training wheels will finally come off.”

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Kirk LaPointe’s media blog points us towards this report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which takes a look at news consumption in the United States.

Bearing in mind that the whole death of print trend is arguably more advanced in the US than in the UK or Australia, it’s worth a look.   Key points:

• The young are least likely to be regular news consumers.  35% of 18-29 year olds follow the news all or most of the time.   For people aged 65+ that rises to 70%

• However, it’s impossible to blank out the news completely and 99% of Americans do admit to getting news, at least casually in some shape or form.   Local (78%) and national (73%) TV leads, followed by the Internet (61%).   By contrast, 50% read a local paper, 54% listen to the radio, while 17% read a ‘national’ newspaper (the latter stat would be different in say the UK, due to the stronger position of national newspapers)

• News is also consumed across several channels simultaneously, 46% of Americans use between four of the six news platforms

The report also looks at Internet news consumption in more detail.    Less than four in ten (38%) Americans rely solely on news from offline sources, the majority (59%) rely on both on and offline sources, while 2% only get their news online.   It’s worth remembering however that ‘offline’ includes TV and radio as well as print.

Tying into some of the stats mentioned above, the research found that online news consumers were by and large both better educated and younger than the average.    So, the median age of all news consumers was 58, but for people who get their news online it was 40.

Finally, and this is a stat we mentioned in the recent ‘Rabbit Feed’ (our weekly newsletter over at Rabbit), news is now much more of a social phenomenon.   Three quarters (75%) of adults that get their news online say they get it forwarded to them through email or social media.

And it works in a virtuous circle.   News gets forwarded online via social media from people who at the same time deepen their engagement with the news.  97% of American social network users read the news online, and 51% of that 97% get news forwarded onto them via friends on places like Facebook on a typical day.

Strengthening the role of Twitter as a network that has influence and importance beyond its 10-15 million worldwide active user base, it’s also worth noting that the study found that 99% of Twitter users are online news consumers.

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A study published by two academics from Oregon State University and Eastern Washington University (via Science Daily) found that when people watch ‘graphic’ and ‘intense’ war news on TV, they are less likely to remember the ads that follow.

Keven Malkewitz and Damon Aiken showed 396 students five minutes of war news from Iraq followed by two 30 second ad spots.   The cycle was then repeated again for the students’ viewing pleasure – more war footage and then more ads.   The ads had all been aired during US nightly news broadcasts and featured large brand names.

If the news items featured ‘strong intensity’ the students were less likely to remember the ads.   The definition of intensity meant words such as ‘suicide’ and ‘explosive’ being used, along with shock images of bodies and amputees.

A previous study confirms much the same – at the end of 2008 Experian found that news programmes, magazines or websites were becoming less effective in terms of getting brand or ad messages across, with consumers simply not being in the ‘buy’ frame of mind when there’s a constant drum beat of doom being thrown at them.

Though in Experian’s study, news media scored highly on ‘social interaction’ (you talk about what you see), it didn’t provide all important ‘time out’ factor.  As a result, 28% of consumers were influenced by ad messages they saw in the news media, compared to 40% for other media.   In other words, if there’s a war or global recession on, put those remaining marketing pounds or dollars into entertainment or lifestyle media!

There is a twist to the study done by Keven Malkewitz and Damon Aiken though: When viewers were shown war news defined as ‘less intense’ (just a bit of shooting here and there?), people who were war supporters often did remember the ads, with anti war viewers still not remembering them.

Guess for some brands, those ad buys on Fox News really is money well spent after all.

Image – Dunechaser

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Research from Nielsen shows that in the US at least, online TV viewing is slowly becoming a replacement for the PVR (personal video recorder) box – for example Tivo in the US and Sky + in the UK.

Nielsen showed that watching shows online was being used as a way to check out stuff you would have watched anyway but might have missed, rather than get you to change your TV habits completely.

More than half of respondents (54%) said that they watched shows online because they forgot to watch it on TV itself, while another 47% said they were catching up on a current season of programming.

‘Repurposed’ TV ads do better than ones specifically designed for the web

And another sign that online viewers really do think that what they see on services such as BBC iPlayer or 4od as an extension of their TV – ‘repurposed’ TV ads do better than ‘web original’ video or flash ads.   The advantage was apparently particularly pronounced in the food and beverage category.

Via – Marketing Charts

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No seriously.   That’s what a study by Sapna Cheryan of the University of Washington found.    The more stereotypical nerd and sci-fi images there are about, the more off putting an environment is for women.

According to Science Daily, Cheryan took 250 students who weren’t studying computer science and took them into a small classroom and told them to ignore the objects they saw as another class was sharing the room with them.   Said objects included Star Trek posters, video game boxes and coke cans on one hand (what?  no empty pizza boxes?), and nature posters, art and coffee cups on the other.

The students were then asked about their attitude towards computer science classes.  The women exposed to the nerd room expressed less interest in computer science than those who weren’t.

Another study involved students being asked about two web design companies and receiving hypothetical, identical, job offers from each.   The key factor on whether women accepted each offer?   The objects on display in each company’s workplace, with women more likely to accept an offer with the “non stereotypical” company.

What does it show us?

First of all, something we all knew, that the environment – the place where you spend most of your waking hours – has a deciding influence on the decisions we make.   It’s something a lot of companies tend to forget though.

Secondly, related to that, according to Cheryan, “objects…communicate whether or not a person belongs in an environment.” So in our mind trekkies = (mainly) male nerds = off putting for those not in the know.

Finally, that the media plays a role in perpetuating stereotypes: “It would be nice for computer scientists in moves and television to be typical people, not only computer geeks.”

Image – Jparise

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A study that shows the limits of social media in helping people discover new content – but also shows the importance of online editorial endorsement  – comes from Knowledge Networks in the US (via Digital Media) .

Viewers were asked how they discover new content and how they decide what to watch, both for TV and online video.   For online video, social media from strangers ranked seventh in terms of recommendations, with verbal word of mouth (41%) and search (32%) coming top.

In other words, even on the Internet people are most likely to be directed to stuff that someone’s told them about face to face.

For regular TV, TV advertising is actually the prime source of content discovery at 46% – who said commercials were dead!  However, social media from strangers only scored 6%.   Meanwhile, just as they are for online videos, verbal recommendations are key in helping people find out about offline TV shows (38%)

Conclusions: Concentrate on online PR, and a search + social media strategy
So is the conclusion that a social media and online engagement strategy is largely a waste of time, and you might as well put your cash into both TV and search ads?  Hardly.

First of all, it’s obvious that even if someone tells you about a great new viral face to face they must have heard or read about it somewhere else.   As always off and online word of mouth have to very much work in tandem.

Secondly, stories or reviews on the Internet ranked highly (27%) in terms of helping people find out about new online videos.   In other words just as you would offline, editorial endorsement online from major blogs and news sources (the lines between the two are blurred anyway) works.

Finally, the Knowledge Networks study shows the effectiveness of search when it comes to helping people discover online video.

However if your social media and search strategy works together then search ends up being even more effective.   That’s shown by an earlier Comscore study that said that people exposed to both what they called “influenced social” and paid search had 233% heavier search behaviour.

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I’m coming to this a few days late due to being in transit to Cow Africa, but UK comms regulator OFCOM has published it’s regular digest of facts and stats. Among other things, the look at adult media literacy reveals that online TV watching is relatively high in the UK.

In particular, 29% of Internet users, watch TV online or download programmes or films. This is largely driven by broadcasters such as the BBC and its iPlayer service, but it means that with 73% of the UK population online, over one in five adults (21%) watch TV over the Internet.

The research also shows that Internet usage among seniors is on the increase, with 41% of the over 65s now online. The Ofcom report also refers back to earlier data about most missed media – I personally use this stat time and time again, especially as it shows that TV is less and less of a ‘can’t live without’ for 16-24 year olds and that for them, mobile phones have pushed PCs+Internet into third place (NewTeeVee has the chart).

The statistic about Brits watching TV online is interesting. It shows that if the content and ways of watching it are good enough, the uptake will reflect that. And that content is what people are used to seeing on their TV screens.

For instance, despite all the talk about the growth of online video and reach of the You Tubes of this world, a report in the summer by Comscore found that these sites capture around 10 minutes of the average US Internet time, and 15 minutes for the UK.

Image – Mr Phillip

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