MEDIA AND MARKETING:Convergence is the big theme these days with the relationship between laptop and television growing, writes SIOBHÁN O'CONNELL

IMAGINE SITTING down to watch the nine o'clock news tonight and, as you watch, you send a text message from your TV to your friend's TV with the remote control and your message appears on their TV screen.

Companies such as Samsung are already building "widgets" into their televisions - small applications that bring everything from weather forecasts to news headlines and sports results from the internet directly to the TV screen. In time, televisions may act as a gateway to the internet, allowing viewers to check their e-mails or send instant messages.

The future of television is changing before our eyes and that is creating new challenges for TV stations as well as TV advertisers.

As Richard Colwell of Red C Research mused at a digital marketing conference in Dublin last week: "Will antiques be on TV or will TV be on Antiques Roadshow?"

According to research produced by Red C for conference organisers Cybercom, if the TV viewing habits of 18-30 year-olds continue in the way they are doing, by 2011 this age group will be spending more time on the internet than watching TV.

According to Colwell: "The television that 16-30 year-olds are watching is already becoming more just background viewing. Part of the reason for that is the increasing trend of being online and watching TV at the same time and the online activity is mostly disconnected to the programme being watched.

"The 16-19 year-olds are most likely to be on their Bebo or Facebook pages chatting to their friends about the programmes they are watching, and 40 per cent of young people watched TV programmes on the web in 2009 compared with 17 per cent in 2008. Then there's the problem of pre-recorded.

"Just under half of all the TV watched by people with this facility is now pre-recorded and they skip the ads most of the time."

As audiences fragment, the sell to advertisers will get harder and that's why viewer engagement is becoming increasingly important.

By some estimates in the US, more than half the top 100 US advertisers are pegging the prices they pay for their commercials on TV to the engagement they get from viewers for that ad.

Online advertising spend has overtaken spending on TV ads for the first time in the UK, according to figures released last week.

The Internet Advertising Bureau report found that £1.75 billion (€1.92 billion) was spent on online adverts in the UK in the first half of this year compared to £1.64 billion for TV.

Ed McDonald, chief executive of the Association of Advertisers in Ireland, says there is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that companies are increasingly turning to online and digital outlets for advertising and that TV advertising, in particular, has been hit by the recession.

This year, RTÉ launched its RTÉ Player which allows viewers to watch programmes online.

RTÉ is currently pitching advertisers a combined TV and online package. TV3 has also invested in its website and many of its programmes are also available to view online after they have been broadcast.

What do the advertisers think? Cybercom managing director Jonathan Forrest, whose client roster includes Guinness, Coca- Cola and Doyle Hotels, says: "We're not espousing the death of TV. People with a digital box may skip the ads on TV but they skip the banner ads on websites too. Just one in every 1,000 people click on a banner ad.

"But our clients are finding the relationship between the laptop and the TV is growing dramatically. Convergence is being demanded by 16-30 year-olds and brands want to be part of the conversation of these young people."

A recent example of this convergence was a campaign Cybercom created around the 2009 hurling championships for Guinness. Cybercom built a Facebook page for each county and also created a dedicated hurling championships website.

"When teams were playing, people were watching it on TV and interacting on the Facebook page," Forrest says. "In that way Guinness became part of the conversation and part of the group and that's the holy grail of social marketing."

Cybercom is currently seeking to persuade big TV spending clients to make one TV ad fewer in 2010 and divert that money to digital instead.

"There is an opportunity for the mediums of TV and digital to work more closely together," says Forrest. "It is all about enhancing the experience of the viewer."