Second Screen Advertising
Categories: Marketing
Ok, the first screen is your TV set, right? Been around since the '40s. Has had good programming on it since the '70s. And today, it's kinda just always...on. It paid for itself with ads. In the beginning, there were only 3 channels (ABC, NBC, and CBS), and it was like a national event to sit around and watch TV as a family at night. Apparently, there just wasn't much of anything else to do.
Then along came the commercial internet in the mid-'90s, and today, few people under 40 watch TV on an actual television. That is, they have their laptop or phone or iPad open, doing...stuff. And on that second screen comes advertising.
The duality of messaging has been a challenge for advertisers and creative types to grasp. Is a message to a now-distracted viewer of main TV worth what it used to be? Is that second screen ad worth more? Less? Same? Nothing? The second screen is the new hardware device, and it carries commercial value; nobody can figure out what it's worth when you see an ad and don't really do anything other than...see it.
The easy comp is the Google Adwords system, where it's really easy to figure out the value to a user who clicks on a far-right column ad from Google and then actually buys that vat of lavender lotion for $39.95 plus shipping, netting to the seller $10. But most second screen ads aren't...that. They're banners and pop-ups and other interstitial ads that drinkers of Coke and drivers of Ford Raptors and drinkers of Folgers Coffee are still wrestling with.
