Doubts over the success of using social media through connected TVs have been expressed by Miles Lewis, the vice president of EU advertising for TV advertising app Shazam.
Speaking at ad:tech London about the socialisation of TV, Lewis expressed the belief at Shazam that the use of social media through connected televisions would fail, stating ‘We don’t think connected TV will prevail’.
Explaining his point to The Drum, Lewis said; There’s a belief that it’s not about connected TV, but it’s actually about connected individuals. All the research coming out, whether it be from Thinkbox or Google saying that TV is still a family time. Why would I have my Twitter of Facebook streams on my main TV?”
He continued; “There aren’t many people, anecdotally, that have their streams on their TV screens. There will always be a few, I can’t say they won’t do this - if you’re using a big TV at home, on your own, you might do that. Things like The Only Way is Essex, which is such an involving programme, may work socially, but say something like Downton Abbey with four of you watching, you won’t do that.”
Shazam this week announced that it had reached the 250m user mark while also adding a new function that allows people to tag any TV show on any channel to find out the music it is playing.