Thinkbox dual screen ‘spy’ study
March 20, 2012
Thinkbox announced that it has appointed COG Research, the award-winning brand and communication insight specialist, to undertake a major new ethnographic study designed to help advertisers and agencies understand the context of 2 screening.
‘Screen Life: The View from the Sofa’ will film the living rooms of 20 TV households in the UK for a period of two weeks in order to gather extensive footage of TV viewing. The footage will undergo a psycho-physiological analysis with a particular focus on any occasions where both watching TV and the use of a second screen – such as a laptop, smartphone or tablet – coincide. It will capture real-time evidence of actual programme and ad break engagement, and will enable the researchers to test the implicit and explicit feelings about brands that have been advertised.
The study will include the analysis of interaction around second screen activities such as activity on social network sites and mobile messaging services, as well as mobile eye tracking to provide a detailed account of how people attend when two screening. Homes will also self-report during the study process using COG’s award-winning digital ethnography technique (which won the New Consumer Insight award at the MRS in December 2011).
Neil Mortensen, Thinkbox’s Research and Planning Director: “2 screening makes up a fraction of the time people spend watching TV, but it is a very interesting fraction and one that hasn’t yet been examined in enough depth. Everyone is talking about it, but very little is actually known about it. We intend to address that with this new study. The TV set remains the most engaging, impactful device as new technologies and behaviours enter the sitting room. 2 screening has enhanced the TV experience for some and it is time to look in more depth at exactly what it means for advertisers.”