This has been a year plagued with second-screen promises, social TV fanaticism, and enough apps to make your head spin. So how can brands successfully and efficiently reach target consumers when resources and budgets are stretched so thin? It's proving fairly simple for 200 brands or so who are doing just that -- fearlessly innovating in a space cluttered with "the next revolution" and "30 seconds of fame." My company, BrightLine, has worked tirelessly at the forefront this year to guide these marketers through the chaos to achieve gold-standard results.
As the leading provider of advanced TV advertising solutions, ours has been a front-row seat to tremendous organic growth in the number of Fortune 500 marketers that chose to simply "lead" over the last 12 months, while their brethren continue their fixation on "shiny new objects" and stumble further off the path to success.
It's no secret that nearly all TV viewers watch their favorite programming while connected to at least one other device -- 56 percent of viewers watch television with a laptop, 44 percent watch with a smartphone and 21 percent with a tablet*. This trend offers the greatest opportunity any of us have seen for achieving true cross-channel engagement. Our In-Television campaigns seamlessly combine them all, and are driving phenomenal social impact for our clients. These brands experienced an additional lift in visits of up to 100 percent to their Facebook pages and an average 25 percent lift in post/tweet activity*, all by successfully engaging them first through their TV experience. Additionally, 62 percent of actual consumers are more likely to "like" a brand on Facebook after engaging with In-Television campaigns, and 23 percent say they actually do*. This shift is not just evident from the behavior (which has proved an absolute prerequisite to this and every other industry being transformed by digital technology), but also from the growth in how many different kinds of brands are successfully using the approach -- i.e., marketer adoption -- the increasing size of ad dollars spent on In-Television in 2012 and how frequently it is now being used.
The "'Net"? The mass migration to TV ads that can effectively go beyond the 30-second commercial and replace a monologue with a dialogue is not "happening soon," it's "happening now." The way to be instantly effective and reach maximum impact and engagement is allowing consumers to seamlessly engage with their favorite brand wherever, whenever, however they like. That's what In-Television is achieving, every time, with consistent, measurable, predictable results.
It's my prediction that this new marketing trend will prove more and more pivotal to all major advertisers' future success. It's time to get engaged with your consumers, the quiet shift is turning torrent. Take a cue from the 200-plus brands who chose to lead in 2012. Look to 2013 to adopt best-in-class ways to shift your marketing spend to embrace seamless cross-channel TV engagement as the tunnel to the future.
* Ipsos Pre/Post Survey Data, BrightLine, Facebook 2012