NBC sees new media habits form with Olympic games
NEW YORK (AP) — About half of the people who are using mobile phones to pull down video or information about the Olympics have been trying out that technology for the first time, NBC said on Wednesday. — NBC Universal …
Context & Ripple Effects
Olympic viewing was already spreading across television and the web, as efforts to watch the Games across TV and the web showed, following earlier mobile Olympics coverage. NBC had prepared its online infrastructure for heavy traffic and sold 85 percent of its online Olympic advertising inventory.
The reported first-time use matters because it identifies the Games as an entry point for mobile media consumption, not merely another screen for established online-video users.
First-order effects
- NBC gains evidence that its Olympic mobile offering is bringing new users into mobile video and information services, expanding the audience beyond habitual users.
- Advertisers in NBC's largely sold-out online Olympic inventory reach an audience that includes consumers encountering mobile Olympic content for the first time.
Second-order effects
- NBC's Olympic coverage strategy has to accommodate viewers moving among television, web, and mobile access rather than treating mobile as a niche companion channel.
- The value of major live-event rights increasingly rests on distribution across multiple screens, alongside the traditional broadcast audience NBC controls in the United States.
Third-order effects
- If major events repeatedly introduce consumers to mobile viewing, broadcasters' digital distribution and ad products become a more central part of the value extracted from exclusive sports rights.
- The Olympics are becoming a testbed for cross-screen media habits, with audience onboarding as important as serving existing viewers.
The trend: Live-event broadcasters are using scarce sports programming to accelerate adoption of viewing and information services across connected screens.