Nielsen defends not releasing Twitter subscriber numbers and denies dropping price on new TV Ratings tool

February 10, 2015 12:14

Gillham

Audience measurement company Nielsen has defended the decision not to release the total number of Australian Twitter users as part of its the newly launched Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings (NTTR), after media buyers questioned the scale of the new metric.

Scott Gillham, head of NTTR also described industry rumours it had dropped the price of the ratings by 30 per cent after just two TV networks, Ten and Nine, signed up to the new service, as “inaccurate”.

The new measurement, launched last week, looks at the number of Australians tweeting about television shows and how many people those tweets reach, with Twitter aiming to take use them to encourage advertisers and networks to spend money on marketing with them.

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Nic Christensen

Nic Christensen worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2016, in roles including deputy editor and media & technology editor. He is former media writer for The Australian and has also worked as a reporter for The Daily Telegraph and senior producer for Radio 2GB.

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1 COMMENTS

Wibble 10 Feb 15

The twitter numbers might get very messy, very quickly.

For instance, on the sample graph – it shows authors, tweets and audience. Are these just during the airing of the show or across a wider window? Because, really, if we are talking WOM as a driver then during airing is the only real measure.

And if so, how is this tracked across the different time-zone play-outs. If I’m in Sydney, and I see a tweet by someone in WA for a show that’s already aired here how much use is that to me?

In short, these numbers need to clearly time-bound, and state-bound, just like the standard TV ratings.

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