The Turner team created March Madness Real Time Highlights to deliver the most exciting, meaningful plays of the 2013 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament through the world's foremost social network for synchronous real-time viewing, Twitter. Additionally, Coke Zero and AT&T were the launch sponsors for the initial activation of this partnership around March Madness and the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament. Both are NCAA Corporate Champions and Co-presenting sponsors for NCAA March Madness Live. Coke Zero and AT&T received significant branded presence within the embedded live player, including pre-rolls.http://sports.turner.com/Awards/2014/NCAA/RealTimeHighlights/ A dedicated team of editors - relying on innovative, real-time, web-based production tools - produced near-instantaneous highlight clips which were subsequently distributed via the NCAA's basketball-centric Twitter handle, @MarchMadness allowing fans to watch exciting game moments directly in their social feed, without having to watch a separate video player or visit a different page. Tweets originated from Turner’s @MarchMadness handle and were elevated to a sponsored tweet status within Twitter’s feed. Re-tweets went out from @BleacherReport and @CBSSports handles. As big plays happened consumers had the ability to see Tweets that alerted them something important has happened, and watch that play, in real-time, without leaving Twitter. The "instant replays" increased engagement for social viewers who already viewing March Madness content and served as an excellent social acquisition tool to garner additional viewers from social media, bringing them to either the digital or linear March Madness games, making it a unique and successful use-case for social content driving immediate viewership. The 2013 NCAA Tournament generated 16.3 million comments across social media outlets, an increase of 112% over last year. The National Championship netted more than 3.5 million comments, up 144% over 2012, to become the most-discussed show on TV from March 19 through April 8.
http://sports.turner.com/Awards/2014/NCAA/RealTimeHighlights/
