Nielsen and Twitter establish social TV rating in US
Nielsen and Twitter have announced an exclusive multi-year agreement to create the “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating” for the US market.
Under this agreement, Nielsen and Twitter will deliver a syndicated-standard metric around the reach of the TV conversation on Twitter, slated for commercial availability at the start of the autumn 2013 TV season.
TV viewers discuss TV on Twitter, creating a new dynamic between audiences and programming. The service’s more than 140 million active users send one billion Tweets every two and a half days, the vast majority of which is public and conversational, making Twitter data a necessity in producing standardised metrics representing online and mobile conversations about television.
The Nielsen Twitter TV Rating will serve to complement Nielsen’s existing TV ratings, giving TV networks and advertisers the real-time metrics required to understand TV audience social activity. These ratings will build on top of NM Incite’s SocialGuide audience engagement analytics platform.
SocialGuide, recently acquired by Nielsen and NM Incite, currently captures Twitter TV activity for all US programming across 234 TV channels in English and Spanish, and more than 36,000 programmes.
Through a sophisticated classification process, SocialGuide matches Tweets to TV programs to offer key social TV metrics including the number of unique Tweets associated with a given programme, rankings for the most social TV programmes and the first-ever measurement of the total audience for social TV activity – both those participating in the conversation and those who were exposed to the activity – providing the precise size of the audience and effect of social TV to TV programming.
“The Nielsen Twitter TV Rating is a significant step forward for the industry, particularly as programmers develop increasingly captivating live TV and new second-screen experiences, and advertisers create integrated ad campaigns that combine paid and earned media,” said Steve Hasker, president, global media products and advertiser solutions at Nielsen. “As a media measurement leader we recognise that Twitter is the pre-eminent source of real-time television engagement data.”
“Our users love the shared experience of watching television while engaging with other viewers and show talent. Twitter has become the world’s digital water cooler, where conversations about TV happen in real time. Nielsen is who the networks rely on to give better content to viewers and clearer results to marketers,” said Chloe Sladden, Twitter’s vice president of media.
“This effort reflects Nielsen’s foresight into the evolving nature of the TV viewing experience, and we’re looking forward to collaborating with Twitter ecosystem partners on this metric to help broadcasters and advertisers create truly social TV experiences.”
Peter Rice, chairman and CEO, Fox Networks Group, comments: “Twitter is a powerful messenger and a lot of fun for fans of our shows, providing them with the opportunity to engage, connect and voice their opinions directly to each other and us. Combining the instant feedback of Twitter with Nielsen ratings will benefit us, programme producers, and our advertising partners.”
There is no word yet of this service being extended to the UK by Nielsen, however SecondSync is already actively measuring tweets around TV programmes. Its daily leaderboard is soon to be included within MediaTel’s Connected Consumer product, showing total tweets for each programme as well tweets per minute for the top 10 most tweeted about programmes from the previous day.