Shazam announced Thursday that the entire Super Bowl, the halftime show and almost half of the advertisements during the game can be tagged using its app, making this the first “Shazamable Super Bowl.’
If any of the more than 100 million people who'll tune into the game use the app to tag a play or an ad, they can access live statistics, unlock new immersive advertising experiences or qualify for sweepstakes.
Its advertising partners will include heavyweights Pepsi, Disney and Anheuser-Busch.
Shazam, which boasts a user base of more than 175 million people worldwide, has chosen the year’s biggest TV event as a launching point for its growing “Shazam for TV” business. The message to networks and advertisers everywhere is clear: Shazam makes TV better.
“The big story Sunday during the game and Monday at the water cooler and in executive offices around the country will be that so many of the advertisements in the Super Bowl were Shazamable,” said David Jones, EVP of marketing at Shazam. “This will be the year of the Shazamable TV ad.”
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Jones has obvious reasons to trumpet his own product, but Shazam’s ubiquity during the Super Bowl, watched by 111 million people in the U.S. last year, does validate the big shift his company has taken over the past two years.
Shazam began as an app for tagging music. If you heard a song, you could open up the app and it would tell you the song title and artist.
Then Shazam added extra features, like the ability to buy the song or to get additional information about the artist. Shazam generated revenue though the song purchases – netting a sliver of iTunes and Amazon’s profits -- and by charging for premium versions of its app.
But that wasn’t enough. Sensing that users were often on a second device while watching television – in particular their mobile phones – Shazam moved into that “second screen” space hoping to engage viewers of both advertisements and TV shows.
At the 2010 Super Bowl, Shazam debuted its first Shazamable TV ad, which used the same audio recognition technology for video content. Users could tag a Dockers Jeans ad and unlock new content related to the product and the company.
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Since then, Shazam has partnered with everyone from Dockers to Paramount for ad campaigns, giving users the chance to enter sweepstakes, find out more about the company or watch exclusive videos.
With “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” users who Shazam’d the trailer unlocked a custom song and trailer, as well as bonus videos produced by Michael Bay.
Shazam has also partnered with a dozen television series, such as USA’s “Royal Pains” and “Covert Affairs.” In the case of “Royal Pains,” users gained access to “never-before-seen videos, downloadable wallpapers” and other goodies.
