Viewers Are Already on Their Phones.It Is Not a Problem to Solve.It's The Opportunity.

For years, second screen has been discussed as something broadcasters need to make happen. An additional layer of engagement to be designed, promoted and coaxed into existence. The assumption has been that viewers need to be brought to the second screen experience, rather than that the experience needs to meet viewers where they already are. 

That assumption is worth revisiting, because the behaviour broadcasters have been trying to create already exists at considerable scale. 

Viewers are already on their phones while they watch television. They are looking up the actor they recognise but cannot place. They are searching for the jacket a presenter is wearing. They are checking a player’s stats mid-match. During live events, social media activity tracks what is happening on screen in near real time. The curiosity is there, it is habitual, and it is growing. 

IMG’s 2025 Digital Trends report captured this well. Audiences increasingly move between screens without distinguishing between a primary and secondary viewing experience. For a large part of today’s audience, the phone is not a distraction from watching television. It is simply part of how they watch. 

That reframes the opportunity considerably. The question is not how to persuade viewers to engage on a second screen. It is how to be useful to them when they do. 

A more useful starting point 

Most second screen experiences have been built around getting viewers to do something additional. Download an app. Scan a code. Follow a prompt. These approaches are not unreasonable, but they treat second screen engagement as something that needs to be created from scratch rather than something that is already happening. 

Think about how most digital experiences have evolved over the past decade. Streaming removed the trip to the video shop. Contactless payment removed the PIN. Recommendation engines removed the need to search. The consistent direction has been towards less friction for the user, not more. The experiences that have genuinely taken hold are the ones that slotted into existing behaviour rather than asking people to adopt new habits. 

Second screen sits in interesting territory here. The habit already exists. The audience is already reaching for their phone. The opportunity for broadcasters is to be part of what happens next, rather than competing with it or ignoring it. 

Where the value is going 

When a viewer searches for something they have just seen on screen, they are acting on an interest that the programme created. That is a meaningful moment commercially, and it happens constantly across live sport, entertainment, drama and factual programming alike. 

At the moment, most of that interest flows to Google, social platforms and retailers that had no part in making the content. That is not a criticism of those platforms. They are simply well placed to capture intent that arrives without a destination. But it does mean that broadcasters are regularly generating audience interest that they are not currently set up to benefit from. 

The commercial case for changing that is reasonably straightforward. The more interesting question is what the viewing experience looks like when broadcasters do start to engage with it properly, because there is an argument that getting this right is as good for the viewer as it is for the business. 

Starting from where the audience already is 

Once you accept that viewers are already curious and already on their phones, the design question becomes a lot simpler. It is not about building something that persuades people to engage. It is about being useful at a moment when they are already looking. 

A viewer who finds what they wanted, at the moment they wanted it, without having to leave the broadcaster’s world to go and find it, has had a genuinely better experience. That feels like a reasonable place to start. 

And it does not require a fundamental change in how people watch television. The behaviour is already there. It just needs something worth finding at the other end of it. 

This is the problem that led us to build Stingr. We work with broadcasters and rights holders to connect that moment of viewer curiosity directly to the content, products and experiences around a programme, without friction and without asking viewers to go looking elsewhere.

If it is something you are thinking about, we would be glad to talk. You can find us at stingr-tech.com.