Nielsen and Twitter Partner on Social TV Ratings
By Gilbert Falso :: 2:15 PM
Twitter and television ratings company Nielsen today announced the establishment of the “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating” metric for the U.S. market. Under this arrangement, Nielsen and Twitter will deliver a syndicated-standard metric showing the reach conversations about television shows on Twitter. The product will debut in time for the fall 2013 television season.
Steve Hasker, president of the global media products and advertiser solutions department at Nielsen explained, “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.â€
TV viewers discussing shows on Twitter have been creating a new dynamic between audiences and television programming. Twitter’s 140+ million active users send about one billion Tweets every two and a half days, the vast majority of which are public-viewable and conversational in nature, making Twitter data a necessity in producing standardized metrics representing online conversations around television.
Nielsen hopes that the new metric will complement their existing TV ratings product, and will provide TV networks and their advertisers with the real-time metrics required to understand audience social activity. These ratings will build on top of the SocialGuide audience engagement analytics platform. SocialGuide is a joint project between Nielsen and McKinsey & Co., and the current center of Nielsen’s social media analytics efforts.
In a blog post earlier today, Twitter’s head of media, Chloe Sladden, commented that, “as the experience of TV viewing continues to evolve, our TV partners have consistently asked for one common benchmark from which to measure the engagement of their programming. This new metric is intended to answer that request, and to act as a complement and companion to the Nielsen TV rating.”