Best practices for converting streaming viewers into participants

From concerts to sports and other tentpole live events, from influencer usage to social interactions to gamification, delivering fully optimized interactive entertainment experiences is key to engaging audiences and brands with live events at scale -Streams to use. Bulldog DM’s John Petrocelli, who has been hosting some of the industry’s biggest events for more than a decade, discusses best practices for high-engagement live streams in this conversation with Ring Digital’s Brian Ring at Streaming Media Connect 2024.

The new dominance of interactive viewing experiences

Ring notes that interactive television is increasingly becoming part of the viewing experience. “Maybe it’s not the exact device or the exact way you might have imagined it 20 years ago, but it all comes together somehow,” he says.

The importance of converting viewers into participants through interactive tools and social media

Petrocelli says: “We’ve been looking at how we can help our customers set up interactive tools to really engage the viewer and make them want to stay, invite their friends and return for later experiences.” What we hear from our brand customers , is, “I can’t get anyone’s attention for four seconds, but we just ran this interactive experience and had an average watch time of 14 minutes.” That’s a pretty significant home run.”

He breaks down what works best to keep interactive streaming interesting through specific curation and audience targeting. “People want to have a social stream, they want to talk about what they see,” he says. “We believe this needs to be curated. It just can’t be this random barrage of nonsense and polarizing comments. If the conversations are related to the video, people will lean in and watch the video for longer. And then it’s things like chat pulling, trivia, graphics, calls to action, and even a dynamic schedule widget that accompanies this viewing experience. Then we start to see the watch time really increase and expand.”

Successful case studies like Shaq’s Funhouse and the Snickers live Super Bowl commercial

Petrocelli cites several successful case studies, such as Shaq’s Funhouse, the Snicker Live Super Bowl commercial, and the importance of entertainment-focused interactive experiences.

“The music media and entertainment surrounding these major sporting events is almost as big as the actual in-game events themselves,” he says. “And for the Super Bowl here in LA, it was Shaq’s Funhouse – this real concert carnival experience with Diplo, Lil Wayne…big, big artists…and we’re spreading that across multiple social platforms for promoter Medium Rare.”

“One of the main reasons for participating in this experience was that there were 20 different TikTok influencers on and throughout the entire experience and we know all 20 of their accounts. It’s almost similar to the rate effect you see on Twitch. You may remember the live Super Bowl commercial Snickers did with Adam Driver a few years ago. He’s in a saloon. Prior to this experience, there was a 36-hour advance live stream with influencers, NFL athletes, and all sorts of weird, quirky games to play. One of the poll options was to select the name of the limo that would appear in the live commercial on Sunday. This was Thursday rolling into Friday. So there was a whole live vote on what the name would be. And he comes out and says he forgets they’re actually in the commercials. The whole commercial is about not being yourself when you’re hungry and don’t have Snickers. And he knocks over the saloon and the whole place catches fire. But this is an example of preparing for the big moment well in advance. AT&T previously went to the Super Bowl and experienced the Super Saturday livestream concert experience and broadcast with artists like Jennifer Lopez and the Foo Fighters. So there’s certainly great business around entertainment-focused experiences with interactivity built in to up the game for brands.”

Join us in February 2025 for more thought leadership, actionable insights and lively debate Streaming Media Connect.

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