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Apparently, 'second screen activity' is the official marketing term for the act of thumbing through your iPad's Twitter app while you watch TV. And predictably, we're all doing a hell of a lot more of it now than we did even a year ago.
A new report from Trendrr, a "real-time company" that "harnesses the value of big-data with industry specific solutions"--am I the only one that can't even tell what these buzzy firms do anymore?--says that "second screen activity" is up 127 percent from this time last year.
That's a lot. If this data is to be believed, it means more than twice as many people are simultaneously status updating on Facebook and watching Two and a Half Men. Calling out Jeopardy! answers and playing Angry Birds. Watching CNN and writing angry tweets at Wolf Blitzer. Dozing through Charlie Rose and watching amateur porn—whatever it is we do with our two-screens-at-once debauchery.
So what does this mean? It means more distraction, more present shock, more multitasking, and more multi-pronged advertising campaigns incoming.
Some marketing blog breaks down the implications for TV advertising:
This is important for brands because studies suggest consumers are more receptive to ads when they’re using second screen apps. If you want to advertise on one screen, it’s worth investigating a second (or third). Even ads can provide an integrated, holistic experience.
In other words, advertising on TV alone is no longer impactful enough to reach consumers amongst the new frontiers of our rapidly digitizing world 2.0. We must now seek to engage consumers with increasingly holistic experiences by beckoning them from the screens across the room into the screens they hold in their hands.
In other words, marketing departments want companies to bill them for a whole new spate of secondary campaigns. But the plans of marketing departments are the least interesting part of this phenomenon. More notable is that we seem to slowly be building fortresses of screens around us, increasingly immersive; a distributed variation of Bradbury's all-consuming entertainment room in Fahrenheit 451.
This probably wouldn't be all that different from leafing through a magazine while watching a sitcom—if the two didn't have the ability to communicate to better persuade you to buy a pair of Nikes.