Shazam

ConnecTV moves from its original social media app function to video clip sharing, selling advertising and offering video clips that link to stations’ websites and YouTube channels. It may be facing competition from Shazam, a sound-recognition app that identifies music, TV shows and commercials, that wants to forge local TV station partnerships and will soon introduce multiple platforms for TV outlets to generate revenue.

Shazam, which was introduced in 2002 and eventually became both a must-have smartphone app and a dogged survivor of social-TV attrition, remains unprofitable as it invests, according to executives, in its long-term success. Under CEO Rich Riley, the former Yahoo exec who took the reins last April, it’s also trying to get on the path to going public. Enter another big Super Bowl play — and a Facebook effort to extend its reach well beyond Sunday or the confines of the app.

Former PromaxBDA chief Jonathan Block-Verk is tapped to expand the London-based company’s expansion into television applications.

The Ad Council is using the second screen app for a campaign about emergency preparedness. “By integrating Shazam into this campaign, the Ad Council and FEMA will extend their message, providing additional facts, video and other resources that their audiences need to take action to prepare,” Shazam CEO Rich Riley says.

In an effort to help brands measure the impact of second-screen ad campaigns, Shazam is introducing a new metric tracking users’ engagement with TV spots using the media “tagging” app. It’s officially called the “Shazam Engagement Rate” and, according to the company,, the engagement metric will tell brands not just how many times their commercial was “tagged” but also how large the audience was at the time.

The network is partnering with Shazam, Viggle, ConnecTV and NextGuide to feature Fox Now sync-to-broadcast content.

In its first partnership with a Spanish-language broadcaster, Shazam said it will be enabling viewers of Thursday night’s Billboard Latino Music Awards on Telemundo to tag the event for expanded content.

There are plenty of people playing, tweeting and multitasking on their smartphones while watching television commercials. For its new, music-driven advertising campaign, Old Navy has enlisted music-identifying service Shazam to deepen the connection among the ads, the brand and the consumers.