The neuroscience of media meshing

Is using social media during the TV break a good thing for advertising, or merely a competitive distraction? Media Native’s David Brennan looks at some compelling new evidence…

One of the fallacies of the post Web 2.0 world has been the idea of ‘replacement’; that one technology will simply ‘replace’ another, and the cake will remain pretty much the same. That explains why so much was missed in those relentless predictions about the death of this or the disruption of that.

Of course, it never worked out that way. The legacy media are still with us; in fact, most of them are still profitable, thriving even. People’s need for entertainment, information and communication has remained remarkably stable, although the way those needs are being met across platforms, devices and contexts is constantly improving.

People are spending more on media products and services than ever before. In many ways, we are living in a golden age of media, at least as far as the consumer is concerned.

One other change the replacement theorists neglected to predict was the greater amount of time consumers devote to media, and in particular the emergence of media meshing to enable us to cram even more media experiences into our already time-pressured lives.

Every launch of Touchpoints so far has seen a greater amount of total time spent on media, with most of the increase generated by consuming two or even three different media within the average half hour.

But it is not simply a case of more time spent on media. The bigger issue is what does that mean for quality of time, especially in terms of how that relates to advertising impact and effectiveness?

The answer is; it depends, but we should not assume that the time spent with two or more media platforms at the same time automatically means a reduction in the quality of that time for either or both platforms.

One excellent example of this is television and social media (indeed, social media appears to be an enabler or engagement-booster for most legacy media from what I have seen so far).

In the case of television, social media is a natural partner as it enables and turbo-charges behaviours that have been going on for decades within the privacy of our living rooms, or around the water cooler the next day.

We know from previous studies that second screening is becoming mainstream; almost a default activity for many TV viewers. There are correlations reported between TV ratings and Twitter activity. And it is becoming apparent that, although second screens can be a distraction for viewers, especially during commercial breaks, they can also improve levels of attention and engagement if they are used in a complementary way.

So, it is no surprise that yet another study has demonstrated the power of the TV and social media relationship, and its ability to create a whole which is greater than the sum of its two parts.

In this case, the study is based on neuroscience and demonstrates how, when consumers use TV and social media together, they create a higher quality, more engaging media experience which itself produces a significant payback to advertisers in the form of a greater degree of memory encoding of the TV commercials themselves.

The study was conducted in Australia by Neuro-insight on behalf of The Seven Network and their media agency, MEC. Most studies have concentrated on the amount of second screening and how it impacts on subsequent behaviour, but this is one of the few to focus on the quality of the experience, especially from a neurological perspective.

What emerges from the study has profound implications for the way we evaluate instances of media meshing behaviour.

The study focused on the measure of brain activity associated with engagement. I have commented previously on the importance of this measure and its strong correlation with long-term memory encoding levels and, ultimately, advertising effectiveness.

The neuroscientists describe it as a sense of immersion in the content, brought about by feelings of personal relevance (often connected to the creative execution rather than the brand, sector or message). In terms of marketing, it is a very good marker of the likely success of the campaign.

In the Australian study, Neuro-Insight found that when 36 viewers (who were fans of the show) watched consecutive episodes of ‘The X-Factor’ on four different nights, social media activity had a significant effect on their engagement with the programme.

Their brain activity was constantly monitored during the show, and any instances of social media behaviour via Twitter were monitored and timed. There were three distinct patterns of brain activity linked to these behaviours;

1. A strong peak in engagement levels from the TV programme generally acted as a trigger to then engage with social media

2. This led to higher than average engagement peaks with the social medium itself

3. When viewers switched their attention back to the programme, there was a slight dip in engagement as they ‘re-entered the zone’, but thereafter engagement levels to the programme began to rise, so that they were significantly higher than the pre-interaction period

When compared to the 120 second pre-interaction period, engagement levels after social media averaged 9% higher. It appears that the brief ‘distraction’ acted more like a reset button, re-invigorating the TV viewing experience.

Compared to their wider database of viewing measurements, it also helped to sustain engagement levels across the whole programme, whereas typically they can decline from an early peak. In fact, across the programme as a whole, social media activity appears to increase engagement levels by around 25%, compared to those viewing sessions where no social media activity had taken place.

This ties in with Thinkbox’s recent study on multi-screening, which suggested that use of multiple devices when watching TV was just as likely to improve response to the TV content as it was to distract from it.

What it demonstrates to me is that the whole is often greater than the sum of the parts, and activities or behaviours that would previously have been perceived as distracting or competing with existing media usage are often more likely to be contributing to a much more effective and valuable eco-system.

I have seen similar outcomes for other media channels – most noticeably direct mail and newsbrands. We could never achieve these insights via the traditional conscious methods of market research, but when we peer inside the human brain and beyond the limits of conscious awareness, we begin to understand just how one plus one can often make three