In a move that could be an end-run around IPTV service providers, content provider CBS (NYSE: CBS) will be collaborating with social media player Twitter to sell video-based tweets for 24 CBS brands that reach beyond TV and include the network's online businesses.
While also taking advantage of other online opportunities, the deal will obviously make use of IPTV's increasing emphasis on second and third screen connectivity--sometimes known as TV Everywhere--to deliver the Twitter-CBS message and ads.
David Morris, chief client officer of CBS Interactive unveiled the agreement at a presentation to advertisers and agencies during New York's Advertising Week activities Monday, noting that the Twitter Amplify program--which also includes partners ranging from ESPN to Viacom (NYSE: VIA), Fox, BBC America and The Weather Channel, among others, helps merge TV and online for audiences in "real time on the world's biggest and most social platform," the Variety story said.
CBS didn't have any ad deals to announce, but Morris reportedly said there was at least one advertiser that wanted to buy in with 20 packaged shows.
For Twitter Amplify, the deal means a move that covers sports, news and entertainment programming all with one partner. Multiple reports have said that consumers increasingly use second screen devices while concentrating on the primary screen for TV entertainment. This trend is being shown among the variety of new EPG options being offered by cable and IPTV providers.
"What I really think we're seeing happen more than anything is that that user experience between the social media, the TV and your mobile device, is really beginning to start proliferating on the mobile devices versus the TV and the mobile device social experience is enhancing your TV viewing experience," G.W. Shaw, vice president U-verse and video marketing told FierceCable in a separate interview for an upcoming eBrief on the evolving user interface.
In the case of the new announced advertising partners, Twitter is positioning itself as "the social soundtrack of television" with more than 200 million active users sending up to 1 billion tweets every 48 hours, the Variety story said.
For more:
- Variety carried this story
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