By Emily Little
PromaxBDA Member Outreach Manager

Last night’s Emerging Media Workshop, at the New York offices of Definition 6, featured the whole spectrum of technology companies: ConnecTV, a true start-up still in is private beta stage; Crimson Hexagon, more established in social analytics but new to the TV industry; and Google+, the internet giant’s foray into social networking.

ConnecTV’s CMO and co-founder Stacy Jolna kicked the evening of presentations off by explaining how his company’s unique social TV platform instantly connects with anything that users, or “view-sers,” are watching via audio recognition. ConnecTV then tailors their online content and social networking capabilities to the recognized show, movie or even commercial, syncing online ads to that content for a more targeted, enhanced marketing message. The standing-room-only crowd was the very first to hear the exclusive breaking news that ConnecTV is coming out of private beta and will be public next week!

Next, Crimson Hexagon’s VP of business development, Melyssa Plunkett-Gomez, gave fascinating insight into the company’s social analytics technology. Like other, similar research platforms, Crimson Hexagon analyzes tweets, Facebook posts, social sharing and other activity during TV shows to extract that audience’s feedback and help inform media buyers’ spending. But unlike those other companies, Crimson Hexagon uses a more intuitive approach that can recognize abbreviations, shorthand and colloquialisms to more accurately analyze emotions and opinions tied to specific points during a show.

Wrapping the night up, Ryan Stonehouse, global lead of social sales and strategy at Google+, demonstrated why the social network differs from Facebook, and how it helps marketers “unify equity.” Almost all the EMW attendees could count themselves part of Google+’s 90 million users, and it was helpful for them to learn how they can segment their contacts into “circles” to streamline and enhance information sharing. This functionality is just one reason studios and networks are flocking to Google+ to create brand pages for their properties, allowing them to target the right marketing message to the right people at the right time. Stonehouse also had some insight for anyone working with social media: “Addressing social as another channel is flawed… think common thread/unification.”

In keeping with the social media theme of the night, Definition 6 had a “social DJ” who streamed tweets about the event onscreen throughout the night. A few highlights below:

@harrisc How TV viewers search for shows & what it means for networks – new research from @google and @PromaxBDA http://t.co/XSuKPhcf

@JPedde Really impressed by the data @crimsonhexagon is able to pull from social regarding TV. Goes further than simple sentiment @promaxbda

@RachelConforti Will be interesting in #2012 to see data evolve @JPedde @crimsonhexagon @promaxbda @Definition6

To learn more about or be involved with PromaxBDA’s quarterly Emerging Media Workshop and other events, contact Emily Little at emily@promaxbda.org.