According to AdAge, social media sites, mainly Twitter, are helping award shows get back on their feet. Live events like the Oscars and the Grammys had been on a steady decline from 2004 to 2008 according to the article. But trending topics on Twitter help audiences get involved in the shows and probably give them more of a reason to watch. That's not entirely surprising, because it seems popular (at least among my generation) to watch t.v. while playing around on the computer (mainly social networking) at the same time. So micro-blogging about what outrageous thing Kanye West does next is a natural extension.
But what's interesting to me is the implications this has on the reputation of social networking for advertisers and their clients. Last semester I wrote a research paper and conducted interviews with industry professionals on the rise of digital media and its integration into IMC campaigns. What I found was that agencies and corporations know digital is where the industry is heading, but they don't trust the medium and its seemingly uncontrollable messages. Compounding the problem is the difficulty firms have in equating social media activity to sales figures. Could social media's boost to award shows mean advertisers will trust social networking more?
It's hard to say, because trending topics on Twitter are still hard to quantify in actual dollars. Sure, if more people are watching the shows then they are more likely to watch the commercials. But I don't know if even that is necessarily true anymore. I mean, when do you think people are tweeting?
Regardless, I think this can only mean good things for social networking and its relationship with advertisers. The more companies start to utilize these sites as legitimate means of communication with consumers the better.
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