Olympics 2012: Engaging New Media

By August 9 2012, 2:20 pm Comments Off
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How is it for you?  Here are some quick stats..

Peak BBC audience figures of 26.9 million for the Opening Ceremony.

Twitter reported a worldwide total of 9.66 million mentions of the Opening Ceremony.

The 100m final saw over 100,000 tweets per minute.

An Opening Ceremony shown in 3D.

Over 1.5 million downloads of the BBC Olympics app.

And the most watched clip on BBC Sport website  in week 1 was Bradley Wiggins’s time trial with 729,000 views.

Looking at these stats we can see the Olympics reflects the multi-platform nature of media today.  TV is arguably our preferred method of engaging with a big event such as this, but we love our ability to watch and keep up with our favourite moments away from the TV.

And Twitter and other social media platforms allow us to share the moments and banter with like minded souls, beyond the confines of our own sofa.

Audiences have engaged with the games in such numbers, that one of the most immediate issues for viewers when the Olympic coverage ends will be how to fill the time?

Traditionally broadcasters have not focused on summer months, but with more of us enjoying staycations and being at home, potentially it is time to re-think those summer schedules.

Indications that Sky have already considered this by launching new content on the HBO-esque Sky Atlantic  (Veep, Alan Partridge), in June.

This is a smart move as it helps to avoid the decay in both viewing figures and brand metrics that TV brands can see through the summer months.

And TV land please feed those of us who have spent the last few weeks glued to our screens.   Our Olympic TV obsession which was born over a startling short period of time, needs feeding…  Maybe we should ask the Beeb to consider Clare Balding’s suggestion of a single channel devoted to running London 2012 footage on a loop.

Louise Brice is a Research Director at Ipsos ASI – the advertising and brand research specialists

Follow us @IpsosASIUK

 

 

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