Live Internet Television

According to MS&L research, as reported by Advertising Age:

84% of digital influencers go online to find out more about something only after first reading about it in magazines and newspapers or hearing about it on TV or the radio…For marketers, it highlights the fact that influencer-marketing campaigns can’t only be digital-based efforts. [These] campaigns [have] to leverage both traditional and online tools to connect with consumers.

The study slices and dices the demographics and provides a lot of fodder for marketers to chew on, but the interesting thing to me is the continuing centrality of television as a conversation starter, even as people spend more time online.

When people head to their computers with purpose to look things up, it really is most often because traditional TV, which reaches a massive audience with a finite amount of content, opened a conversation which can be expanded and developed to maturity online through archived content, social media, blogs, and online media coverage.

Examples are: Popular TV series like CSI gain a followings which then creates online brand extension and communities and  around the show. Likewise, Oprah and Today-style TV segments covering popular trends drive people online to learn more and get involved.

What’s great about the Web — its infinite variety and specialization — is exactly what prevents it from providing what mainstream television still provides: the most eyeballs focussed on a unit of content, a common water-cooler conversation starter.