Interactive Better Served With Mobile - The Convergence of TV and Web

Are you watching TV when an ad shows up and on top of the ad is a box inviting you to hit ok to receive more info on the ad? Are they intrusive or helpful? Have you reached for your remote to press the ok button? Or simply ignored?

Perhaps you prefer to interact with your TV on a different device. Through an audio signature, an app on your smartphone or tablet will connect you to the appropriate site. "It then serves up links, coupons or music downloads corresponding to what it hears on the tube through smartphone microphones." Intrusive or helpful? It seems in an app world, unless you proactively open your app, you are immune to these messages. It is your call to receive these signals. In the case where pop up boxes simply appear on your TV screen, they are not as easy to eliminate.

An innovate use of mobile ad interaction comes from Shazam. "One of the earliest users is Old Navy. The retailer's chief marketing officer, Amy Curtis-McIntyre, talked about the company's Shazam ads at Ad Age's Digital Conference this past spring. When consumers used the app to identify any of the songs heard in Old Navy spots, styling tips, deals and key looks featured in the commercial popped up." An intriguing way to interact with a brand.

For networks, working to make their programming more highly involved, interactivity can work on many levels. It can lead to more loyalty with a program, it focuses the attention span to the programming, and ultimately the ads that run with it, and it better measures who is watching. "With listening technology that loosely mimics Shazam's, ABC launched apps to serve ancillary trivia in step with the now defunct TV show "My Generation" last fall and, more recently, "Grey's Anatomy," thanks to Nielsen Media Sync technology."

This relationship of multiple devices synced together is the future of interactivity on television, not intrusive pop up ads on the TV screen. TV programming and TV advertising can actually improve thanks to the rise of mobile devices in the home. As viewers get more comfortable engaging with programming through their iPads, iPhones, and other devices, improved measurement will occur and ad revenues will rise. Internet and TV working better together.