Competition for viewers is coming not just from the big social media platforms as they sign up live and on-demand content, but also new online services set up for social media interactivity within programming.

At the same time operators are turning to social media to measure audience engagement and also schedule viewing as well as creating buzz. There is also growing partnership between broadcasters or content creators and social media platforms, which can then become alternative online outlets for programming.

Indeed while the big platforms are competing with traditional pay TV operators as distributors they are turning to traditional broadcasters or networks for their content and becoming additional sources of revenue. 

This trend was noted at the recent Connected TV World Summit in London, where Colin Dixon, Chief Analyst and Founder of nScreenMedia, noted how Facebook was pushing its live platform supplying content from Buzzfeed, New York Times and CNN among others, achieving a 300% increase in live usage during the first five months of operation in 2016. “Social Media is moving rapidly towards TV models,” said Dixon. “Twitter had rights to NFL (National Football League) 10 Thursday night games, not premium property but delivering 2.7 million viewers per game.”

As Dixon noted, for the coming 2017/2018 season Amazon has taken the rights, paying $50 million, five times what Twitter paid, highlighting the growing value of such properties for online players at a time when there are signs audiences for live sports on traditional channels are declining.

Facebook meanwhile is continuing its aggressive investment in live video, announcing May 2017 that it will stream at least 20 Friday Major League Baseball (MLB) games during this year’s regular season. Although initially confined to the US this will extend access beyond the games’ local audiences.

The games are not exclusive to Facebook, but significantly the focus will be on integrating with the social media platform to recreate the stadium experience online. With Virtual Reality coming in from the wings as well, live sports broadcasting will evolve to make viewers feel more intimately connected with the action. As Facebook’s Head of Global Sports, Dan Reed has pointed out, the banter and rituals conducted among fans in the stands is very much of the action for baseball games, as well as many other popular team sports like football.

There is also the mobile dimension, where social media apps have become the dominant portal into entertainment content. “Social is used way more than video on smartphones and tablets,” said Dixon. “You can get way better audience coverage from social platforms than video apps.”

The call for operators therefore is that they must embrace social platforms or experience terminal decline, despite the attendant risks such as prompting churn. “The risk for operators of not going to social platforms is greater than that of doing so,” said Dixon. “If you don’t go there you won’t be there for today’s audience as they age.”

There is also an altogether positive reason for embracing social media, which is that it can actually boost engagement and viewing on traditional platforms. It has promotional value and also provides valuable tools for measuring audience behaviour and content performance. “YouTube clips are now used gauge to content popularity, so TV in turn is taking Social Media seriously,” said Dixon. “TV operators are no longer issuing take down requests when they see their content on You Tube, because they recognize the promotional value.”

Indeed the power of social media lies in the knowledge it provides about its users’ preferences and behaviour, which is much greater than pay TV operators have been able to obtain through analytics based on return path data. Social media therefore brings scope for targeting services better down to households and individuals. This can be enhanced through engagement and interaction around the content, which will provide further insights and opportunities to gauge user preferences more effectively.

This is also an opportunity for new services built from the ground up for social media integration. One of these is Sentab, an OTT platform combining social media interaction with live TV via on an over-the-top (OTT) platform. At the same time shows like Q&A, an Australian panel discussion program similar to the BBC’s Question Time in the UK, have demonstrated broadcasters can get in on the act directly. It monitors the number of tweets directly linked to the show as it is aired and encourages viewers to send in their own questions that way for the panel. This has been shown both to increase the audience and help enliven the show on the basis of audience feedback.

It has also had the side effect of encouraging some older viewers to engage with social media. This highlights an opportunity for broadcasters that appreciate the importance of the older demographic, which typically has more money to spend and is also ready to be engaged, even if they are less inclined to be fiddling with their smartphones while watching.

Another aspect of social media, which again is both an opportunity and threat, lies with user generated content, especially on the news gathering side. By definition reporters are not always conveniently on the scene of breaking events and social media platforms are increasingly where the first footage is shown, often captured by smartphones. There is potential for broadcasters to come in and work with these sources to improve quality and provide some form of moderation.

To an extent this is happening with Twitter’s support of live feeds while collaborating with news agencies like Bloomberg, which is a step towards becoming a premium content provider. This also highlights the risk for broadcasters and operators given that the big social media platforms are now bigger than they are. But there is no choice but to get engaged.