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RSSRelative to the latter, my team has been spending a lot of time lately analyzing Twitter data to try to see if it could be useful in better understanding how people view television, since so many people regularly tweet about their TV viewing activities. The results have been interesting, but what was most eye-opening was the amount of interest and discussion that was generated in comments when the results were released on a popular technology finance blog, Fred Wilson's AVC (Disclosure: Fred is an investor in my company, Simulmedia).
What came through the strongest among the 100+ comments was whether Twitter might be able to replace Nielsen and other audience measurement services, or whether Twitter data might even be able to replace set-top-box data as a source for census-based television viewership. Could Twitter someday replace Nielsen ratings, or set-top-box data? In my view, it's too early to tell, but here are some of the advantages that it might offer:
Real-time results. What Twitter lacks in precision, it certainly makes up for in real time. Tweets tell you what people are doing in the moment. You don't have to wait hours or days or weeks for results. As more and more marketing becomes real-time, so must the tools that enable it.
Intention data. Twitter can not only tell you what people are doing, but why. Understanding intentions and motivations can take a lot of guess work out of marketing and media.
it's a focus group/survey tool on steroids. Twitter lets you watch, interact and survey lots of different types of people very quickly and very efficiently. The survey and focus group business will never be the same once companies learn how to leverage Twitter here.
Authenticity. Twitter today is as wide open and uncontrolled as TV panels are closed and controlled. Neither is ideal, but having both means that we're all more likely to find out the truth about viewers over time.
It's free. Yes. Hard to beat this one. Companies can tap into Twitter for free. I suspect that Twitter will find ways to charge for premium services and uses over time; now, however, it is free.
Is Twitter the new black when it comes to consumer marketing research? Should Nielsen and others be worried? What do you think?
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But Twitter is just one input feed into this emerging, more authentic (more accurate!) way to gauge what people really think, are doing/saying, ready to recommend/trash etc when it comes our brands, products and services.
Like we do, you can use a range of tools to gather these converational feeds into robust data sets for modeling, slicing, dicing and - yes - measuring the hearts, minds and habits of consumers. Try it and see how much closer it gets you to what the customer wants and needs more than the old school tools.
So yes, the Nielsens and even the Forresters and maybe even the IRIs of this world should certainly be looking worriedly over heir shoulders. Morgan's right to suggest their days are numbered when it comes to giving marketers quality, actionable intelligence from which to build our winning insights and campaigns.
But it won't be a single channel platform, like Twitter, that kills these giants. It will be smart marketers listening, really listening, to the unfiltered, on-provoked voices from the marketplace --- applying a rich mix of new tools, channels and feeds that no one ever dreamed of when these big old dinosaurs of consumer research were born at the dawn of the previous age of advertising.
A couple of comments on threads among the responses. First, set-top-box data will not supplant Nielsen either for one simple reason. STB data is not viewership it is Household TV tuning. I know of no marketer whose target is "households". STB data will be part of the new TV ratings metric I have no doubt, but it will be a hybrid of STB household tuning data and panel-based demographic viewing data. (The same will apply online with server data supplying the quantum and a panel supplying the demographics).
Also, people seem to be hung up about the Nielsen sample size. There is a point in every measurement system, when adding more sample adds no more precision - all it is doing is adding more cost. You just keep adding more and more meter households, you get "the same ratings" (within the sampling tolerance of course), you send yourself broke and make Nielsen richer! A nice analogy is when you're sick and you go to the doctor who is unsure what ails you, so her orders a blood test. This blood test is generally 5ml of blood out of the 5 litres of blood in your body - you don't need to take all 5 litres and do a thousand tests!
Re: intention data and authenticity - since when is it guaranteed that people are telling the truth online?
Re: it's free - yes, and you get what you pay for.
Re: real time results - what serious marketer would accept giving up precision? Precision is what it's all about. We all have seen how a small error can result in catastrophically huge mistakes.
Simply put, you can qualify and quantify what people are saying about your brand or specific campaigns via Twitter (and over 30 billion other sources) using BrandsEye.
Wow, the delusions of uninformed originality!!
That being said, I was under the opinion until recently that consumers (twitterers) don't microblog about inane things like consumer packaged goods until I had to go under the hood of Twitter and several social media sites for a client presentation, confident I would find little of value. I was absolutely wrong & have the calluses on my fingertips from typing all weekend to prove it. Consumers may not blog about the attributes of the product, but they do blog about the best place to get their favorite X at the best price. They also tweet about offers by the company (and those may be company representatives doing the tweeting – remember the old New Yorker comic adage: on the internet, no one knows you’re a dog!)
So, to the points of many – we don’t know WHO is tweeting about X, which marketers care about. If it isn’t their target market, a company and its ad agency won’t care if they’re tweeting or not. If it is their target market, they want to know everything they’re tweeting about.
But let’s think about this a little differently for a moment. There are certain layers of Market Segmentation that don’t change: race and gender. Others change more slowly: Age, geography, household income. And then there are those layers that can be influenced directly by marketers: psychographic and behavioral. This final, more translucent layer, is the one we need to pay special attention to in the social media space. Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy about getting the lowdown on a new product by consulting the opinions of others before they make a purchase. Identifying like-minded individuals and categorizing these opinions to learn about product perception is something we are just beginning to learn how to do. Sentiment toward these products may not yet be measurable in the traditional sense (i.e. Nielsen). But for some products and categories, (especially for politicians) I argue that tapping into Twitter and other social media sites will become MORE valuable than existing measurement tools. Especially when we can tell from the subtle nuances of word choice, whether the person who tweets is obviously a Republican or a Democrat. Conservative or Liberal. If they fit into a certain psychographic “tribe”. In short, we WILL be able to know by your tweets if you are a consumer (or voter) worth targeting… or if you are simply a dog.
While I think Twitter might be a good gauge for figuring out how people are reacting to some things - particularly news, "event TV" like the Super Bowl, and some reality shows like American Idol - I don't think it'll replace ratings any time soon.
That 10% of the "vocal" Twitter users that Jaan references, and the 15% of the general population that Tim references, may be precisely the demographic that some marketers are trying to measure.
It's unfortunate, but true.
Basic statisical principles recommend never using data that may present bias. Twitter does exactly that. When Nielsen formulates a panel for research, they do so by seating a panel that elminates potential bias and provides a sample that is reflective of the population the are seeking to forecast.
Unfortunately, I do not see Twitter being able to do this today or anytime soon.
If 10% of Twitter users account for 90% of the posts, what do the other 90% have to say?
That's what smart research qualifies.