Summary
This presentation addresses how brands can build research communities through social media. It looks at what works and what doesn’t, and provides case studies into how social media communities are currently being used to move beyond buzz towards deeper insights for brands, products and communication. Future opportunities for realising social media's full potential for customer understanding are looked into, including uses of the image-sharing website, Pinterest.

Summary
Zeebox is an app, a website and a platform for those that want a richer social TV experience. The app had around 1.5 million downloads and over 300,000 monthly UK users in September. Zeebox works on a second screen while the user watches TV. Its technology allow user to see what friends are watching, look up more information, buy products that they see and chat about shows either on Twitter, with Zeebox-designed hashtags called zeetags or in private chats. The opportunities for marketers are broad, from synchronising with ads and driving users to Amazon, sponsoring zeetags and making them interactive and developing their own apps.

Summary
The new breed of 'Smart TVs' may well have home screens that look like an iPhone, but they lack the smartphone's touchscreen ease of use. Despite their connectivity, they are unlikely to appeal to those wanting to multi-task while watching TV. Multi-tasking is personal behaviour and only really works where the screen is being viewed by a solitary person. This is where the smart tablet comes into its own. They are small enough to rest easily on laps but with screens large enough for secondary viewing, social media-ing, web surfing etc. Tablets or laptops is where the new ad opportunities lie. This month's Focus examines some of the opportunities offered by the lucrative second screen.

Summary
Connectivity creates the opportunity for TVs to take on some of the capabilities of the PC. But what do people actually want to use connected TVs for? Mindshare's work with its online research community, the Hive, has shown that the fundamental role of TV is likely to remain the same. Connected behaviours sit more naturally on the second screen - a tablet/iPad, smartphone or laptop - where they do not interrupt TV viewing. Around 40% of people in broadband homes are now using second screens while watching TV at least once per week. Opportunities can be separated into five categories: on-demand video content, content sharing, transactions, social interaction and companion content. There are several obstacles to addressable advertising (advertising delivered to specific households) becoming a reality, while the second screen is platform agnostic and used independently of the TV and opens up commercial opportunities in programming itself.

Summary
Interactive television (iTV) promises greater consumer engagement and enhanced brand perception. Recent developments are expanding its reach and making it easier for brand marketers to track performance in ways that matter. During 2011, 75% of US TV households exposed to some type of iTV advertising. With almost 40% of households now with DVRs, the value of traditional commercial buys is decreasing and the ability to measure iTV marketing results grows in importance. Kimberly-Clark, GlaxoSmithKline, Honda and State Farm explain their reasons for taking part in iTV experiments and their findings.

Summary
The trends listed in this article are already occurring but will become increasingly significant in 2012. The list also includes implications for brands, and covers the diverse uses of mobile such as in commerce and television; the growth of walled gardens and ecosystems; real-time bidding for advertising; educational uses of digital services; and guerilla marketing.

Summary
The Age of Connected TV is dawning and with it some new opportunities for advertisers in a world that is bridging the gap between traditional TV viewing and the world of content-on-demand offered by the internet. Connected TV will give marketers an insight into the lives, behaviours and preferences of customers within their most natural of habitats - their living room. This, in turn, will offer the opportunity to deliver targeted bespoke advertising and content, such as banner creative within programme guides and new platforms beyond apps.

Summary
Consumers do not make decisions in a linear way. They are influenced by the cloud of noise around them at different times of the day. The idea of a 'Cloud' is a better metaphor for the complex infrastructure of future communications, capturing how things work from a human perspective. It is, after all, ordinary people who are the true integrators of brands' marketing efforts. Cloud thinking helps us to more easily embrace the complexity of the coming communications world. It encourages more intelligent planning within and across disciplines. This will reduce waste and increasing the sustainability of marketing.

Summary
Presentation from the 2010 MRG Conference, identifying four major media trends: web being incorporated into TVs, TV systems adopting web capabilities, new devices becoming TV devices and consumers adopting "3 screen" (mobile, PC, TV) strategies. There will be three types of audience: shared viewing on main TV, single viewing on main TV and "solus viewing" online, whether on mobiles and PCs. Implications for marketers are discussed; for example, new types of ads will appear, such as banners on EPG menu pages and VOD ads.

Summary
Interactive television is increasingly being abandoned (in Sky, down from 150 campaigns in 2006 to 80 in 2008) in favour of online video. Reasons are discussed: the red-button interactive experience seems shallow compared with (e.g.) Web 2.0, the development of web-based advertising has displace interactive TV from front-of-mind in planners, online video appears to offer a much fuller interactive experience and control, technological developments in interactive TV have been much slower, interactivity in the UK is very limited (except for Sky) and inconsistent between platforms, the media investment costs are considered too large. However, the author argues that, properly understood, interactive TV works well, delivering very good brand metrics, recall, purchase propensity etc. (as measured on SkyView and the TNS world panel). It can deliver an engaging and compelling experience and will remain a valuable tool for brands which can use the channel’s strengths; the decline conceals a shift in emphasis away from direct response to branding support.