Social TV, Branding and Monetization

While much ink in the high-tech trade press has been devoted to social media marketing in general, social TV's potential as a marketing, advertising and branding tool has arguably been somewhat overlooked.

Anchored by a prominent advertising executive who has a long-time interest in social media as a marketing/advertising tool, this session will showcase a number of social TV applications, including applications that are designed to run on the EBIF-based cable interactive TV platform, and apps that are designed to run on the iPad, smartphones and other TV-companion devices; and will explore social TV's potential to change the nature of advertising and marketing and of TV content in general. Among other things, the session will attempt to identify strategies for monetizing social TV whether through advertising or tcommerce, to explore how advertisers and brands can leverage the increased audience engagement with programming that is promised by this new medium, to identify the risks that social TV might pose to brands, and to determine whether social TV has the potential--in the face of an increasingly Balkanized television audience--to "save the water cooler" and thus to deliver more effective national branding campaigns.