Sport and reality lead the way in first Nielsen Twitter study into TV-generated tweets
Tweets about Australian TV shows were seen by almost 100m people in October, the first measurement of social TV conversations on Twitter by Nielsen in partnership with the social media network has claimed.
Viewers sent 1.2m tweets relating to TV shows during the month which led to 97m impressions, with sport and reality programs generating the most interest. Nielsen announced in March is was planning to launch the TV Twitter data analysis in Australia.
Head of Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings Scott Gillham said the new measurements will provide agencies and advertisers with a better understanding of where to place media spend.
“Social media is transforming the way viewers engage with TV as audiences share comments and opinions about their favourite shows in real time,” he said.
“Interestingly, social media conversation is also helping to drive TV audiences and creating a stronger demand for catch-up TV.
“Being able to measure and evaluate TV programs by their social engagement allows networks to better understand audience reactions to their programming, while offering advertisers and agencies another element in evaluating where to place media-spend and the impact of those placements in driving earned media.”
The study will be expanded early next year to analyse which brands people are Tweeting about, Gillham said.
The NRL Grand Final sparked the most tweets, with the 75,000 sent during the match seen 8.4m times. V8’s Bathurst 1000 was next with 38m tweets followed by the finals of The Block Glasshouse (25m), The Bachelor Australia (18.5m) and X Factor (8.7m).
In total, 36 per cent of all TV-related tweets revolved around sporting events, reality shows (20 per cent), current affairs (20 per cent), news (16 per cent) and drama (6 per cent).
Danny Keens, global chair of television at Twitter, said its partners have been asking for a benchmark to measure the social engagement of their programming.
“Twitter is the social soundtrack to TV today. Our platform is public, live and conversational, as well as widely distributed,” he said. “Ultimately we hope Twitter will make TV more social, as engaging with other fans heightens the viewing experience.
“We also hope it will help create innovative new uses of the platform with broadcast partners.”
Sarah Keith, Network Ten head of research, analytics and inventory management, added: “Online connections are influencing not only what programs people to choose to watch, but also when they watch. We believe Nielsen TV Twitter Ratings are a vital next step in quantifying this activity and interaction.
“Ten’s ambition is to be number one in Social TV, which we define as the union of TV and Social Media creating engagement, conversation and interaction between followers, viewers and brands. This new ratings system will help us continue to drive, track and most importantly measure both engagement and conversation around our programming.”
Steve Jones
