Social Media Drives TV Watching

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Everyone knows that the “screens” (TV, laptop, mobile device, another mobile device) are colliding and overlapping, but how exactly do online behaviors and TV viewing interact? TV Guide took a whack at understanding the relationship between social media buzz and TV watching with a new survey of 3,041 U.S. adults, and found that social media buzz does indeed help drive TV watching.

Overall 71% of respondents reported having seen social impressions about TV shows, meaning any kind of mention in social media, covering a broad range of venues including the usual suspects like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and so on. Meanwhile 17% of respondents said they have started to watch a show because of a social impression, and 31% said they’ve continued to watch a show because of a social impression.

Among those influenced to start watching a show by a social media impression, 76% said they were prompted to start watching by positive comments about the show, 64% cited social media buzz about topics or storylines that interested them, and 13% said “I like to watch what others watch.” Among those influenced to continue watching a show by social media, 77% said it helped keep up their interest in shows, 66% said the topics or storylines discussed on social media were interesting, and 34% said social buzz around controversial moments helped keep them engaged.

For comparison’s sake, among those who haven’t been influenced by social media to start watching a show, 80% cited TV ads and 46% cited word of mouth as reasons they start watching shows.

Interestingly, the survey found that social media influence on TV watching can take some unexpected forms. For example, 27% of respondents said they’ve begun watching more live TV because of plot spoilers revealed on social media -- up from 20% in 2010. I’ll call this the “social media spoiler aversion effect.”

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3 comments on "Social Media Drives TV Watching".

1. Howie Goldfarb from Howie Goldfarb
   

   commented on: February 27, 2012 at 3:36 p.m.
   I am pretty sure that a recent study showed no correlation between positive Social Media Chatter and ratings. It seems just like with all Social Media, 85% of content/chatter is being done by 15% of the users.
2. Claudio Marcus from Visible World
   

   commented on: March 1, 2012 at 7:18 p.m.
   While the headline of the article is "Social Media Drives TV Watching", the reported data indicates that TV ads are an even bigger driver of influence in starting to watch a show (80% for TV ads vs. 17% for social impressions). Perhaps "TV advertising works better than social media" (even though they are likely quite complimentary) would have been a more accurate eye-catching headline.
3. Augustine Fou from Marketing Science Consulting Group, Inc.
   

   commented on: April 27, 2012 at 10:27 a.m.
   Claudio, of course TV ads will drive more TV watching... NBC does a great job cross promoting their own shows. Social media can be thought of as layering on top of that -- where users engage with each other to talk about the TV show (NOT the ads, mind you).

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