Dive Brief:
- Nielsen unveiled a new metric, "Social Content Rankings," that uses Facebook conversations and tweets from Twitter about TV shows on traditional broadcast and streaming services.
- The measurement company had been taking Twitter conversations into account for the last three years on the number of tweets, unique posters and reach of those tweets about TV shows.
- In October, Nielsen announced total audience measurement that was expected to track audiences across all platforms.
Dive Insight:
After three years of including Twitter measurements in its TV ratings, Nielsen’s new "Social Content Rankings" metric is adding Facebook conversations to the mix to meet complaints that its ratings system hadn’t kept up with changing way people are actually finding and watching TV programming.
The new metric gives advertisers, broadcasters and streaming services better insight into social media outreach.
"The development of Social Content Ratings reflects Nielsen's commitment to continually adapt our services to meet the needs of the industry and is part of Nielsen's ongoing effort to evolve our measurement to reflect the total audience across screens and platforms," Nielsen Social President Sean Casey said in a statement.
In the same statement, David Poltrack, chief research officer of CBS Corporation and president of CBS VISION, added, "Nielsen's measurement of multiple social networks, each of which consumers use in different and unique ways, will provide programmers with a more holistic view of the total social conversation and deeper insights."
Social Content Rankings is expected to be available by mid-year.
