Smart Screen Exclusive
ConnecTV Gears up for Social Second Screen
Story Highlights
By Chris Tribbey
ConnecTV wants just six seconds of your time. Shared with the world, of course.
The Emeryville, Calif.-based second screen app company is looking for major adoption of ConnecTV in 2014, offering a unique social media experience that takes a six-second clip from live TV and puts the user in charge with personalization and sharing tools for Facebook, Twitter and email.
Stacy Jolna, ConnecTV’s co-founder and chief marketing officer, said approximately 400 TV networks are allowing users to share the Vine-like show clips, which uses audio fingerprinting to see that someone’s tuned in to a given channel. Once a user presses “clip” in the app, ConnecTV pulls up the last two minutes that aired, and let’s the user select a six-second chunk of the broadcast.
“It immediately offers you discovery, all the cool video clips that other users have created, two minutes of live images from your show or game so you can ‘clip’ six seconds, [the option to] personalize the clip with a comment and customize the font style, color, placement and size, and share your clip with one touch to your social sphere,” Jolna said.
A Jan. 3 visit to ConnecTV.com shows what users have already done with the Oklahoma’s upset over Alabama in the college football Sugar Bowl the night before.
The app, which first launched in late October, is currently available for iOS devices, with Android next in line.
The app is monetized via a unique AdSync feature, which synchronizes TV ad spots to trigger a second screen companion experience on the app, which “activates” the TV spot., Jolna said.
“Users can then choose to take action on the ad they’re watching on TV,” she said. “ConnecTV’s AdWords works similarly, but triggers the companion experience on the app whenever a key word is mentioned on any TV show. So imagine ‘back to school’ is said during a talk show or comedy or drama or news program, and ConnecTV instantly could trigger a companion ad for Walmart or Target.”
ConnecTV is the result of three years work by senior executives from TV Guide and TiVo.
