Any regular reader of this blog will know two things: that our Research Director receives the occasional threatening wedgie, and that Thinkbox’s love for Twitter knows few bounds – and not just because of the divine Bruce.  Twitter recently held an event called ‘Twitter TV’ at which they invited Thinkbox to speak.  At the event, Bruce Daisley proclaimed that ‘Twitter loves TV and TV loves Twitter’ (might have been the other way round but you get the point; it was a love-in).

The mutual respect is real and all around the world TV companies and Twitter are having grown-up conversations about working together.  Thinkbox has been promoting the benefits of social media for TV and TV advertising for some time; TV provides lots of the inspiration for social media which in turn amplify TV. Our research study, ‘Screen Life: the view from the sofa‘, examined the multi-screening phenomenon and the implications for TV programmes and advertising, which were overwhelmingly positive (it’s won some awards too, which we’re sickeningly boastful about). Read more »

Last week I attended a stat-packed presentation by Oliver & Ohlbaum on the future of TV. As it is Christmas and a time for giving generously, here are some of those stats, gift-wrapped and placed beneath the Christmas tree of advertising knowledge.

Before I stat you up I, I’ll point out that, as usual, the O&O event was a fantastic use of time, full of genuine, impartial insight, and I would urge you to clamour to get to their future events.

O&O were full of cheer for the future of TV – and not only in the UK, but globally too. They highlighted TV’s ‘robust’ position within the display advertising market and predicted ‘slow but steady growth’ for TV ad revenues (their forecast went as far as 2017). This is fair enough and Thinkbox will be announcing the figures for UK commercial TV revenue in 2012 early next year. They’ll have to go some to improve on 2011’s record-breaking high of £4.3 billion – and some forecasts predict a small drop from the record high – but we’ll have to wait and see. Let’s not count our chickens before we carve our turkeys. Read more »