TV to Internet Convergence: How successful is it?

If you were you among the millions tuned into last night’s long-awaited return of ABC’s hit drama, Lost, then during the show you saw a commercial from Oceanic Airlines alerting you to “stay tuned” for special information. As a huge ‘Lost’ fan myself, I knew this was something worth waiting for. However, the show was over and the commercial for Oceanic Airlines didn’t actually air until 45 minutes after the season premiere ended, during another show! And I am 100% sure that many true ‘Lost’ fans would know that as well. 😉

So finally what it turned out to be was a short promo (fake obviously) promoting that Oceanic Airlines “will take you to places you’ve never imagined.” Then flashed a website: FlyOceanicair.com. This whole thing was a brilliant idea because people who are fans of ‘Lost’ are known to obsess about any missing clues they can find. So what this did was cause a lot of people to go to the website right away; I know this because I tried to, but couldn’t access the website for about 15 minutes because it was so busy.

This was a perfect example of a successful PC and TV Convergence. This method is also used during highly-viewed events like the Super Bowl. During the 2007 Super Bowl, advertisers used the last 15 minutes of the game (prime time) to get viewers attention by directing them to websites, and they were successful. According to Bizreport.com, “During the game results showed that web traffic averaged around 160,000 visitors per minute, as opposed to an average of 80,000 in the previous two to three weeks. During the last fifteen minutes of the game the visitors per minute rate was at its highest at 282,546, the majority of which were from the U.S.!” This is useful information for publishers who not only should be keeping up with whats hot online, but on TV. What makes it even more important is with TV, you need to keep in mind the time-sensitivity factor. Plan head and keep up to date with what is going on around you.

Come back next week and vote for your favorite Super Bowl commercial!