Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings Shows Major Audience Jump

8 Oct, 2013 By: Chris Tribbey

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Nielsen has released its first-ever Twitter TV Ratings, measuring the activity of TV-related discussions on Twitter, showing “Breaking Bad,” “The Voice” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” as the top three shows being discussed either right before, during or right after the shows aired.

The information could allow cable operators, content owners and app companies to better gauge how consumers are engaging with live TV content.

“We are just beginning to understand the dynamic relationship between social media and television,” said Beth Rockwood, SVP of market resources and ad sales research at Discovery Communications. “New tools, like the Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings, that allow us to further investigate the relationship between individual programs and social media will bring new insights and raise new questions.”

In just the second quarter of 2013, 19 million people in the United States composed 263 million tweets about and during a live TV show, a 24% increase in authors and 38% increase in tweet volume year-over-year.

The analysis shows that for the Twitter TV audience for any given live TV episode is approximately 50 times bigger than the number of authors tweeting about it.

“The Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings are a powerful measurement with far-reaching implications for the industry,” said Steve Hasker, president of global product leadership for Nielsen. “It’s exciting that investments are being made to build 360-degree engagement — and drive passion from viewers — around programming. This holistic measure of how Twitter activity influences TV engagement will bring clarity to the value of those efforts.”
 

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