With Shazam’s existing brand reach it is the perfect company to build momentum for second-screen advertising.

A lot of noise has been dedicated to the starts-ups coming into the second-screen space and rightly so, the likes of Zeebox have a brilliant product. But no matter how good the product it is tough to get people to download an app and to expect them to remember fire it up every time they are on TV.

This, as many analysts and research reports will suggest, is an activity that will eventually feel natural. But until that point you have brands raring to go, excited about the opportunity that adding an interactive, trackable layer onto TV ads promises but without real scale to trial and experiment.

Shazam, as announced today, already has half a billion users worldwide. That’s a very large amount of people that are already comfortable with the brand, the logo and the action of scanning audio to bring up more content. And, according to Miles Lewis, VP advertising sales at Shazam, the ad service is its fastest growing revenue source, proving already that brands are at least testing its value.

Earlier this month MPG Media Contacts head of video Matthew Breen debated what effect multiscreening was having on TV advertising, concluding that for all the distractions, the potential outweighed the risks.

In the UK Shazam’s main partner is ITV and this weekend ran a Shazam-enabled ad within the X Factor. But according to ITV’s group multipplatform controller Stephen Poole, in the long-term Shazam will play a big part in its second screen plans.

“Second screen is an area we really want to innovate in, and our Shazam proposition plays a bit part in that,” said Poole.

ITV clearly sees Shazam’s value in being able to drive these behaviours at an early stage but beyond that there will be lots of opportunities for many companies, at the large broadcasters or via smaller start ups, to be involved in this space.