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Local TV Social Influence Rankings: Chicago
05 Jan 2012 Posted by Brian Spencer
Local media outlets have always had authority in their markets. With the advent of social media, this authority can now be quantified with tools like Klout. Klout measures influence with data like the number of Twitter followers and the number of times those followers pass-along (re-tweet) a message.
Social influence scores will not replace the traditional currency of Nielsen audience data, but it is an interesting supplement to inform advertisers about the influence that each station has with viewers. This example shows the social influence of the major network affiliate stations in Chicago. WMAQ has taken a clear lead in the market through a larger number of active Twitter followers.
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How Social TV Will Save Traditional TV
08 Aug 2011 Posted by Brian Spencer
Your TV set and your social profile are about to merge.
Adweek reported that social TV will change the way we watch TV and the way we connect with friends. With a click on the remote, your TV will share what you are watching with your Facebook friends. You’ll also see an on-screen listing of what they are watching. Discussions will take place on the TV screen so that you can laugh, cry, rate, and review programs in real time.
Consumers are already making a habit of sharing their media habits online. Social TV will just make it easier.
Here are the benefits for advertisers and networks:
Higher product integration value
Conversation leads to greater engagement. If I’m engaged in a program, then I’m less likely to miss details. Product integration becomes more valuable as friends discuss the outfits, the cars, and the music in the program.
Less channel surfing
Social TV makes it painful to change the channel if my friends are watching the same show. This returns value back to traditional commercial pods. It also gives networks an incentive to create buzz-worthy programs to keep friends watching together.
Less time-shifting
The DVR takes a back seat during real-time viewing. With social TV, any ordinary program can become a must-see appointment. If it becomes a habit with my friends to solve the murder together during CSI: Miami, then I will miss-out if I’m not watching in real time. This makes the DVR less of a threat to commercial ratings.
More brand chatter
The conversation doesn’t stop during commercial breaks. Expect users to comment and review every spot the same way that Super Bowl parties produce chatter about commercials. Marketers have an opportunity to identify brand enthusiasts and extend the conversation.
The next few years will see dozens of technology platforms fight to bring social TV into the mainstream. Marketers should be prepared to put their best foot forward during programs with lots of buzz, and nurture the brand conversations that social TV will produce.
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Facebook’s Ad Revenues To Nearly Double This Year
02 Sep 2010 Posted by Market and Main Media
In the social media category, the most influential player is Facebook, accounting for almost a fifth of all display ad traffic in the country. Estimates from eMarketer predict that Facebook will book nearly double the sales in global advertising in 2010 that it did for 2009. Last year, Facebook was estimated to have pulled in $665 million but analysts say the private-held company may bring in as much as $1.285 billion in 2010. The social media site’s self-serve ad platform is doing exceptionally well. Self-serve ads, launched just three years ago, are the fastest growing ad platform in Facebook. In fact, according to Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst for eMarketer, the self-serve ad platform “accounted for about half of all ad spending on Facebook.” Williamson added, “It’s really become a tremendous business for the company. We didn’t account for the size of that business last year in our estimate, but we found that it’s become a great tool for direct-marketing advertisers.” In part, this surge can be accounted for by the increasing number of self-serve advertisers (typically local marketers) who have reallocated marketing dollars from yellow pages listings to Facebook.
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B2b Needs To Be More Social
08 Jun 2010 Posted by Market and Main Media
Business-to-business companies have lagged behind their business-to-consumer counterparts in taking advantage of social media opportunities. eMarketer reports on recent research conducted by Genius.com and BtoB magazine. The study found that as many as half of business marketers have not utilized social media tools like blogging or Twitter. Of those who do use social media, LinkedIn was the most popular with 75% of respondents having experience with the site. Facebook, though less popular than LinkedIn, was used by 58% of marketers while Twitter was used by just over half (51%).
However, that’s not the whole picture, as eMarketer points out. A 2009 study by Business.com found that B2B marketers who do employ social media tactics tend to participate in the social media realm more extensively than B2C companies. In addition, B2B companies were more likely to have metrics in place to measure results.
The Genius.com report concluded, “While recent studies have shown that up to 90 percent of consumers are using social media to make their purchasing decisions, B2B marketers seem to be out of step and are using these tools much less frequently.”
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The Era Of Social Media Is Here To Stay (At Least For A While)
08 Jul 2010 Posted by Market and Main Media
A recent commentary by Social Fresh’s Justin Kistner brings a macro perspective to our understanding of social media’s pervasiveness. What’s interesting is his assertion that “we’re in the 3rd Era of the Web and it’s The Era of Social Media.” In other words, we’re at a turning point in which two older eras of web innovation (e.g., new media, Web 2.0) give way to the new era of social media. Kistner even links the decline of Web 2.0 with the rise of social media based on a Google search analysis of the terms “social media” and “Web 2.0”. Indeed, blogs, wikis, forums and RSS have peaked with the advent of Facebook.
But social media is more than a trend, as this excerpt from Kistner’s blog points out:
- 3 out of 4 Americans use social technology
- 2/3 of the global Internet population visit social networks
- Social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web
- It’s growing at 3x the rate of the overall Internet
No other social media site has gained the traction that Facebook has. Facebook leads the social media charge and epitomizes the sea change that social media brings to how we use the Internet. Not only does Facebook dominate web searches, but its traffic and usage have exploded, making it the most visited Web site on the Internet (surpassing Google and Yahoo!). A Hitwise analysis shows that Facebook actually sends more traffic to news and media sites than Google News does.
Ultimately, Kistner’s point is that the social media era is not a passing trend. It will be around for a long time and is definitely something for businesses to invest in rather than ignore and hope it goes away.
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Live TV Events and Social Media Make Good Partners
14 Apr 2010 Posted by Brian Spencer
Viewership ratings of live TV events, including award shows, are experiencing a resurgence after several years of precipitous declines and rumors of broadcast TV’s imminent demise. Aided by social media (e.g., Twitter trending topics and Facebook status updates), live TV events have experienced significant ratings increases during the last year. A recent article in Ad Age offers several specific examples:
• MTV’s Movie Awards in May of 2009: online “buzz” about “Bruno” and “New Moon” fed interest in the event, which racked up 5 million viewers. In addition, traffic to MTV’s microsite surged by 205% over 2008
• The BET Awards in June of 2009: this event was the highest rated celebrity telecast for all of 2009 thanks to a BET Twitter account (which had more than 40,000 followers) and a tribute to Michael Jackson. More than 10.45 million viewers watched it live. BET also paid unusual attention to its Twitter participants by hosting a “Wall of Tweets” which showed Twitter updates during the live show. Traffic to the BET website grew by 100% over 2008.
• MTV Video Music Awards in September of 2009: Thanks to Twitter, Kanye West’s inappropriate interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech prompted a surge in viewership for the remaining two hours of the broadcast.
• The Grammy Awards in January 2010: The increase in viewership spiked by 35% over last year, bringing total viewership to nearly 26 million. Ad Age attributes this positive trend to a “high volume of real-time tweets and a decent amount of pre-show buzz.”
To be fair, not everyone is convinced that social media should be credited with the resurgence. Brad Adgate, a Horizon Media research analyst, offers this alternate explanation, “Last year was record-low viewing for most awards shows, so there had to be some sort of bounce-back. Having windows of insight from regular consumers’ opinion has its place, though I don’t think that would necessarily fuel ratings. The truth is these shows have gotten more entertaining.”
Regardless, Nielsen is developing a way to analyze the impact of social media on TV viewership, in real-time. Soon, programmers will be able to correlate surges in online buzz to specific moments in a live show.
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