Dual-Screen Advertising Leverages Tablets, Smartphones for Greater Engagement

The race for next-gen advertising mindshare is on, and the latest entry is the Sync platform from never.no, which, as its name suggests, syncs ad content between the television and a second-screen tablet or smartphone – and the content flows both ways.

"never.no has always been effective at attracting eyeballs to screens and engaging consumers, but this toolkit takes our capabilities to the next level," said Zachary Weiner, director of marketing at never.no. "For the first time, advertisers have a way to coordinate campaigns that make full use of the two screens, and broadcasters have a concrete platform for generating true dual-screen advertising and a quantifiable increase in social-media ad dollars. It's the first and only closed-loop solution for interactive TV advertising."

Sync makes it possible to sync a second-screen device to an ad on the TV through timed “trigger” elements in the broadcast. Viewers can then interact with it through polling, games and other engagement activities. 

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Sync then pulls the results of that interaction back onto the first screen and integrates them into the programming or ad spot in real time.

"Now, just because programming goes to a commercial break doesn't mean viewers get a break from the second-screen action," Weiner said. "Sync's backbone technology creates a perfectly correlated brand experience that keeps viewers engaged throughout both the broadcast and the commercial breaks. That's good for broadcasters because it creates more revenue and monetizes their social TV investment, and good for advertisers because it strengthens the power of their ads."

Sync is part of never.no's Interactivity Suite (IS), a platform that supports “participation” TV by enabling viewers to influence a broadcast in real time, as well as allowing them to interact with one another and the rest of the world. Using IS, a broadcaster can aggregate user-generated content from social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook (News - Alert) into programming, and build synchronized companion apps that enable viewers to interact with their televisions using a tablet, PC or smartphone.