$12 Billion Social TV Marketing Spend in USA By 2020?

Posted by Richard Kastelein in Writers on July 26, 2011  |  1 Comment More from this author  |    |  Follow Richard Kastelein on: Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube

According to Jack Myers, who triggered everyone's radar at the first Social TV Summit in Hollywood, California last week, this could very well be the case and a $12 billion market by 2020 for Social TV is possible. Double that globally, perhaps event triple as the fastest growing TV markets are all outside the USA. How much of that will be new spend and how much will be siphoned off from traditional TV ad spend is up in the air. While America is expected to dominate ad spend in 2013 ($167bn) the five developing markets of China, Russia, Brazil, India and Indonesia will follow, contributing 62% of new ad dollars over the next three years.

It's hard to put a tangible number on such a fresh market - and it also depends on a number of things... for instance - what exactly is Social TV? And does that include multiplatform casual gaming (social gaming), tCommerce, micropayments etc. Or is it just about advertising or freemium based membership revenue scenarios? Or is it all of the above? Transmedia is also a creative strand that marries very tightly to Social TV but is it Social TV? Is Social TV more about content sharing and content discovery than content revenue?

Predicting a market valuation on Social TV is like trying to pin a medal on a shadow. But kudos for someone having a crack at it - and Myers certainly has the gravitas and personal media brand to resonate the numbers. 

We all know Social TV is essentially the intersection of TV and Social Media. But beyond that, there are plenty of forks in media convergence that touch that idea, or use it for dissemination but are not necessarily 'Social TV' as one might think.

In the opening remarks at the exclusive event, held at the Belair Country Club in Hollywood (also live streamed for free globally on the Internet), studio heads, writers, producers and a plethora of C-level executives were privy to Myers prediction of where the market is going.

And some believe he's right. Dave Morgan, over at Mediapost for instance:

While I haven't fully gotten my head around those numbers yet, Jack is a good friend and has been extraordinarily accurate in his macro market projections over the years, so I'm inclined to believe them, particularly when you consider them within the context of the $40 billion to 50 billion annually which he has previously forecast for all of social media marketing by 2020.

Barry Silverstein over at ReveNews also covered the numbers:

Industry analyst Jack Myers, who publishes the Jack Myers Media Business Report, predicted at the summit that social TV marketing could be a $12 billion market by 2020. While revenue projections are never a safe bet, the dominance of social media in today’s technology world lends some weight to Myers’ forecast. Regardless of the actual number, social TV is something all of us should be watching.