The Second Screen Hype Cycle

I was reading an article recently from an industry “evangelist” describing the second screen phenomena as very “nascent technology”, that the odds of you discovering that something is on television that you didn’t pre-record or already know about is low, that the majority of consumers will continue to want to channel surf to watch the lion’s share of their content and that the “remote is not going anywhere anytime soon”.

Not a middle of the road stance.

I thought long and hard about that article.  Part of the problem being described is a classic market adoption challenge known as “crossing the chasm”.  Fair enough--people’s behaviors take time to change as we are all creatures of habit.  But as I read and re-read the article, I started looking at the individual feature comments and thought in terms of the feature sets we have used to describe second screen (Simple, Social, Seamless, Stimulating, Discovery).

And then I re-read the most recent Gartner report called the “Hype Cycle for Broadcast and Entertainment - 2012.”

The Coming Battle for Second Screen

In the last few weeks, a key number of market events have taken place that give an indication of what lies ahead for Second Screen.


- Game Consoles. While all of us know have known for some time that Microsoft's announcement in the spring about SmartGlass was an important sign to their commitment to the space, most of us (including me) were surprised they delivered a revision-1 level experience relatively quickly and have a serious vision about what this change in consumer behavior can mean to their platform in terms of changing hard core gamer experience AND changing video entertaiment on the platform. But what I think is passing over the heads of most of the industry is what impact the Wii U will have on gaming and the second screen space.

Second Screen turns the corner towards monetization with clear examples in sight

In 2012, it seemed that everywhere I turned, analysts, pundits and critics were saying either the second screen was distracting or that while second screen usage seemed to be a new consumer behavior, those consumers were all just checking email, playing angry birds or on Twitter/Facebook.  Sometime in early 2013, the shared view in the industry seems to have changed, with some general level of acceptance of both the potential of consumer engagement in content and brands, but now there is a new skeptic demand--"Engagement?  So What. Show me the Money!"

A quick recap of the The Imminent Power of 2nd Screen Consumer Engagement @ Advertising Week

Rick Liebling of Y&R moderated a great panel of second screen industry experts yesterday in the NASDAQ Market Site in Times Square, largely focused on the impact second screen potentially has on the advertising space.

His able-bodied panel was represented by David Pugh of Magic Ruby, Joe Inzerillo of MLB Advanced Media, Jordan Berkowitz of Ogilvy & Mather, Sue Kaufman of Group M and Brody O'Harran of Microsoft Xbox--a great cross section of the burgeoning industry.

Revisiting Microsoft's Xbox SmartGlass Platform

Last week I had the opportunity to moderate a second screen panel and attend several other panels and presentations at the Variety Entertainment App Summit in LA.  While I greatly enjoyed the panel on second screen monetization with YuMe, Magic Ruby, Cinram/1K and MTV, I thought the most eye-opening session was the presentation of Microsoft Xbox SmartGlass by Mark Turner.  While I had seen Ron Pessner present something similar back at a 2nd Screen Society in NY last June and I had been playing with the platform at home for the past 2 weeks (and even wrote about it last week), somehow the epiphany of just how big this could be for the entire second screen ecosystem had escaped me.  Let me talk you through the key points they get me excited and explain why I spent this weekend re-exploring the platform at home.

Quick wrap-up of the 2nd Screen Society Panel at the Multiscreen Summit

I had the pleasure of attending a great panel this afternoon on the monetization and consumer engagement of second screen with a strong cast of industry players at the Multiscreen Summit here in Hollywood.

Guy Finley, the executive director of the 2nd Screen Society, moderated the panel which consisted of Babba Uppal from Endemol, Tom Engdahl of Magic Ruby, Matt Kennedy of 1K Studios, Zane Vella of WatchWith, Marjorie DeHey of MEF and James Hursthouse of Roadhouse Interactive.

2nd Screen Sunday @ NAB 2013

With NAB Show just about to wrap up, we thought this would be a great time to recap Sunday's second screen event in Las Vegas.

Registration kicked off a little early on Sunday as were expecting "a few walk-ups"--we ended up with an incredibly long line that would not abate and actually had to start the program late to get the most of people into the room for Hardie Tankersly's keynote, which kicked off the event to standing room only of 350-400 people.

Hardie delivered a great keynote in a fireside chat format (lead by Seth Shapiro), helping the audience to understand why getting the metadata that powers the rich second screen applications syndicated to key partners is so important.  Those key partners joined Hardie on stage after the keynote to talk through the challenges and take audience Q&A.

We tested the waters with a "2nd Screen 101" session where we expected 15-30 attendees to join in a parallel program track--and were surprised when 100-115 joined the 45-minute session.  The industry is clearly now mature enough that we need to facilitate great thought leadership to at least two segments of participants: 1) experts who live and breathe this stuff every day, and 2) new entrants who are just starting to figure out what all the fuss is about.  Expect to see more of this type of content from us at our 2nd Screen Summit in NYC in late June.

iPowow, one of our newest members, delivered an incredibly engaging live second screen experiment during a technology spotlight, engaging the audience in 3 live voting scenarios and show the results live on stage and then showing the parallel scenario that was recently aired on a live broadcast with the same live voting technology.

Kit Digital launched their "2Si" social discovery platform at the event, with industry thought leader Alan Wolk on stage guiding the audience through the features and consumer use cases it was designed for.

We had an incredibly engaging session on the direction of the second screen app market moderated by Marty Shindler, with industry veterans such as Alex Terpstra from Civolution and Tom Engdahl from Magic Ruby trading views with Tracey Garvin from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Joe Inzerillo from the MLB dazzled the audience for 30 minutes, taking all of us through an incredibly detailed case study of their MLB At Bat product and how complex it is to have the level of success they have captured as the industry's #1 monetized app in the iTunes Appstore.

That was followed by Andy Batkin moderating a very engaging sports panel with Tyler Slocum from the NFL and Joe Inzerillo from the MLB discussing their brand engagement needs with industry startups TOK.tv, Kwarter and iPowow.

Jason Kint from CBS Interactive Sports had the closing keynote, taking the audience through a Super Bowl 47 case study and reminding everyone just how far reaching second screen can be for major events and the brands that sponsor them.

The conversation over cocktails buzzed along for quite awhile before a smaller group broke off  to engage further in second screen dinner that was sponsored by Kit Digital and Civolution.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, about 30 of us gathered in a conference room on Monday to conduct a 2nd Screen Society Advisory Board meeting, discussing and progressing key industry initiatives around the DIAL protocol for device access and ad agency measurements.

Add all of the focused action to the incredible buzz of the NAB Show floor (which seemed to scream 2nd Screen and 4k) and it was an 2nd Screen packed week in Las Vegas.

You can check out the Twitter engagement during the show (#S3NAB) and, for conference attendees, we will be posting the audio and presentations under a password protected link shortly (with an email notification).

Look out for our webinar series on "Successful 2nd Screen Strategies" and join us in NYC during CE week June 24-28 to continue the discussion at our 2nd Screen Summit NYC, jointly presented with Broadcasting and Cable.

@ChuckParkerTech
@S32Day

A quick wrap-up of the 2nd Screen Society panel at the Next | TV Summit

Last Thursday (20 Sept), I had the opportunity to spend the day at the Next | TV Summit @ the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.  While the day was interesting all around (a lot of TV Everywhere, digital video growth, etc), I found the second screen panel perhaps the most interesting and engaging of the day (no surprise here).

Guy Finley, the executive director of the 2nd Screen Society, moderated the panel which consisted of Stephen Brooks from Magic Ruby, Stacy Jolna from ConnecTV, Ed Haslam from YuMe, Alex Rowland from Alphabird, Julien Signes from Envivio, and Chris Wyatt from YouToo.

Netflix sneaks in some Simple second screen functionality

Depending on how up to date you are on your Twitter feed (or your S3 2Day curated news service), you most likely read the brief story on Gigaom about Netflix quietly rolling out some second screen functionality for the PS3 implementation of their streaming service.  I tried the service last night and included a few screen shots to give you an idea of what is capable, but let me try to take this conversation in two directions: 1) a discussion about what you can do today with an iPhone or iPad with your Netflix service, and 2) where the real opportunity for Netflix and other OTT video service operators lies.

Long anticipated zeebox second screen app launches

zeebox announced their US launch today, starting with a partnerships that include NBCUniversal, Comcast Cable (Xfinity), HBO and Cinemax. For those who haven't had a chance to see the app while in the UK, it is certainly worth downloading. They are promising enhanced experiences for The Voice and Notre Dame Football on NBCU and for True Blood and Boardwalk Empire on HBO. They are additionally touting feature sets that include a 7-day program guide (for Discovery), live synchronization with their now famous zeetags (which enable contextual commerce and the look-up of Stimulating content related info), and of course Social integration with Facebook and Twitter.

The 2nd Screen: Transforming video consumption - Q3 Update

Third Quarter, 2013: Impacting the 1^st Screen

The first 9 months of 2013 have been explosive for 2^nd Screen, though confidence by the trade press and investors has wavered somewhat during the summer.  Apps have continued to improve, new apps have kept coming, monetization evidence is in plain site through several engagement models, and the convergence of 2^nd Screen companion experiences and 2^nd Screen viewing experiences has continued to gain momentum.  The rise of the 2^nd Screen Ecosystem continues to be a blessing and curse for nearly all of the players in the video ecosystem, especially the content distributors and the brand advertisers.

In this brief summary, I am going to make references to our published research (“2^nd Screen: Transforming Video Consumption”, a 252-page report published during our 2^nd Screen Summit @ CES on January 7^th, and the Q1 and Q2 Updates of the same published on April 7^th and June 27^th ), as well as to blogs and conferences we have hosted and attended during the last 9 months.  However, the information should still be relatively coherent regardless of your attentiveness to those events. I have also included the introductory Executive Summary below for your reading clarity.