Chapter 15
Social TV Measurement
Despite the attention online video receives daily, broadcast television remains the most important advertising medium. TV's share of worldwide ad dollars jumped from 38 to 46 percent over the last decade; Americans log 36 hours of tube time per week, versus 1.6 hours weekly for the streaming stuff watched on computer monitors and mobile screens (Fulgoni 2010).
TV's “king of the hill” status results from a growing and almost adulatory appreciation of its value to advertisers in today's media landscape: its unrivalled power to attract audiences. To paraphrase Mark Twain, “The report of television's death was an exaggeration.”
Although people watch more TV than ever before, viewership for almost every program is smaller than years ago, due to the 500-plus channel universe available through cable, satellite, and the Web. Watching TV resembles the modern family dinner: Members rarely sit down at the same time; rather, each eats according to his or her own schedule and tastes. What, when, where, and how to watch shows is a personal programming exercise that regularly involves the use of DVRs and on-demand services, which liberate people from the rigidly scheduled activity television watching once was. The days are long gone when the CBS, ABC, and NBC television networks controlled America's viewing and organized our lives.
In today's TV world, there are two factors worth noting about the viewing experience. First, people often use multiple forms of media simultaneously. It wasn't so long ago that people read the newspaper or flipped through magazines while watching TV; it was on as background. Today, television viewing and Internet use go together like iPods and iTunes. Three out of four Americans use the Internet and TV at the same time—and this number is growing every day. In fact, major TV manufacturers are pushing this trend along by offering Internet-enabled sets. When using the Internet, viewers mostly interact with friends on Facebook and Twitter, or look up search terms on Google (Yahoo 2010). This combination of social media and television is creating a “worldwide living room,” where people chat about programs, stars, and ads easily with their online friends and networks (Poniewozik 2010). And since Internet use is increasingly mobile, this “living room” is really anywhere and everywhere the viewer is located.
The second element to note is that enjoying television is an important part of our social lives. Think back to the 2010 World Cup: There were countless stories about the many restaurants and bars that capitalized on soccer fans who gathered to watch, eat, drink, and celebrate or commiserate together. On most days, many of us talk about TV shows, YouTube videos, MySpace music, books, and all types of media content with family, friends, colleagues, and associates, at home, at the football game, around the water cooler, and online. Conversations about TV act as social lubricants and give us a common topic to discuss.
Consequently, TV outlets are looking to have their shows attract and engage very social viewers, and hold onto them over time; and advertisers are looking to be in shows that people seek out. Both groups are supplementing eyeball-based ratings with measures that offer insights from listening to social media conversations. Several research companies have begun to develop social TV ratings grounded in listening, the subject of this chapter.
To appreciate the innovations in social TV ratings, we'll begin with a quick overview of the conventional ratings business. Over the last 50 years, media measurement companies calculated program and commercial ratings from diaries, surveys, set-top boxes, or metered samples. These were computed at overall levels such as “Adults 18-plus” or “all U.S. households,” and the demographics of audiences “reading print media titles,” “watching TV shows,” “listening to radio programs,” and “using the Web or Web-based services.”
The ratings business evolved in the mass media era to support the notion that marketers should reach the audiences with the largest numbers of consumers targeted for their advertising. Along with that, the media industry developed measures like gross rating points, cost-per-thousand, and cost-per-point, to plan, buy, and negotiate media. That data guided marketers to choose shows where their products’ advertising should be placed. It estimated how many people they could expect to reach, how frequently the ads would be seen, how cost-efficient the buy was, and the audience it delivered postrun. Most practices designed for mass media found their way into the digital realm, as well; as a result, media planning and buying still looks very much the way it did at the height of the mass media era. (As an aside, the merit of measuring digital media in traditional media terms has been an important long-running debate in the industry. It is beyond the scope of this book to explore, but a very interesting topic if it relates to your work or responsibilities.)
Social TV ratings supplement and enrich traditional ratings. Several companies today—including Collective Intellect, General Sentiment, and Networked Insights—offer these services. Although each company's ratings computations differ, there are some similarities in their methods, such as:
- Social Media Source selection: Research identifies locations online where viewers hold conversations and comment on TV programs. These sources include official show sites, fan pages, unofficial fan sites, specialized blogs and forums, and social networks.
- Conversation collection: Marketers develop rules for extracting relevant information that they use to create search queries that retrieve the conversations.
- Conversation analysis: Measures of engagement or involvement—especially the volumes of posts, comments, and reads—are central to the process of computing social TV ratings. Additional analytics provide enhanced detail and more granular analysis, such as the strength of the bond between viewer and show, themes, brands, characters and plots, and the sentiment expressed about them.
- Reporting: Vendors provide custom and syndicated reports, as well as dashboards that track trends and display key indicators like volume, sentiment, themes, or word clouds. Some offerings incorporate third-party data sources, such as Quantcast, for demographic information.
Social TV ratings have started hinting that the way people bring the programs into their lives differs from their general popularity as measured by conventional ratings. To take one example, Networked Insights computed social ratings for the top 75 Nielsen-rated shows over the February through April 2010 period. As shown in Table 15.1, social ratings and Nielsen ratings for the top 20 socially rated programs highlight the differences between them. Several shows rated low by conventional methods were very successful in the social realm.
Table 15.1 Top 20 Network TV Shows Ranked by Social Rating.
Comparing the two ratings approaches, the results showed that while there was agreement on two of the top shows—American Idol and Glee—only seven of the top-rated Nielsen programs appeared in the top 20 socially ranked shows. Unsung programs like Heroes, Saturday Night Live, and Cold Case had social rankings ranging from sixth to eleventh place, whereas they brought up only the distant rear of Nielsen's rankings. In other words, shows with low conventional ratings can be huge successes in terms of their social popularity (Networked Insights 2010).
In addition to ratings, companies measure the strength of the bond between viewers and programs by factoring in sentiment, affinity, and intention to stick with the program. Collective Intellect, for example, develops an “audience viewing intention” score that sheds light on viewers’ plans to watch programs, and whether they'll watch it live. Jointly, ratings and bond strength reveal the ways programs do, and don't, resonate with viewers.
Emerging Plays for Social TV Ratings
Because these companies analyze conversational substance, they leverage listening-based insights to help users of their ratings gain business advantages in ways that go beyond the “horse race” ratings, by incorporating them into planning media strategy, message creative, and media content. We see four plays emerging from developments in social TV ratings:
- Improve media planning and targeting. Locate the shows whose viewers talk about specific product categories and use that as a basis to integrate them into media plans. Doing so increases the odds that messages will reach not only the right people, but highly engaged ones. Combine that with analysis of the sources where conversations take place to develop a strategy that integrates Web sites, forums, and social networks into the media plan. Vet them for quality and conversational fit (Key 2009).
Additionally, enhance ratings forecasts by building listening data into models. (See Chapter 18 for a related discussion focused on sales forecasting.) One valuable use is to refine ratings trends predictions for on-air programs, or for prototyping ratings for new programs not yet aired that may be considered for media plans. Boosting forecast accuracy will lead to better media strategy and tactics.
- Make smarter media buys. Companies that buy on the spread between conventional and social media ratings may be able to purchase time more cost-effectively, especially for low-rated programs whose audiences concentrate highly engaged customers and prospects for specific products. Even when buying time in premium properties, those with higher social ratings will deliver more highly engaged audiences. Purchasing on the basis of social ratings can give companies a competitive advantage over rivals that do not.
- Provide creative input that syncs with viewer interest. Use the conversational themes, people's likes and dislikes, and their sentiments uncovered through listening analysis in order to give direction to creative development, for messaging, and the product itself. Broadcaster RTL Nederland tweaked its version of talent show X Factor on a weekly basis to keep it in step with audience buzz. Through listening-derived insights, the show made regular changes, modified its format, and opened itself up for greater audience participation by satisfying the desire for behind-the-scenes looks at contestants; it even brought back an immensely popular singer who had been sent home (Verhaege et al. 2009). Here in the States, Bravo network president Frances Berwick told the New York Times that, “We get a lot of information about story lines, and the different people, and what they want to see more of” (Quenqua 2010).
- Don't stop with television programs; extend the social ratings concept to all media. All media that companies use in their plans should benefit from social media listening insights. It is entirely possible to profile media such as magazines, radio stations, or Web properties the same way as described for television programs. You can rate them on engagement and conversation fit, and integrate that knowledge into the media plans. Similarly, you can leverage creative insights to ensure that communications address customers’ deep interests.
Listening-led actions inspired by social TV ratings like those described here may substantially increase the effectiveness of marketing and advertising. Social ratings are still very new, and companies using them are probably keeping mum about how they are using them and what they've learned. But we'll be listening—and you should, too.
Social media listening is ushering in new ways of measuring the appeal of television programs, by gauging them on their level of audience engagement. Using listening-based measures, businesses can delve deeply into conversation analysis, with implications for media planning, buying, creative executions, and television programs themselves, which, in combination, may lead to more effective engagement and communications.