Commentary

Nielsen To Track TV Experiences On Social Media Accounts

It should be obvious to anyone with a Twitter account that social platforms are where folks digest their TV experiences. Of course, making sense of all that chatter is a trickier equation.

That’s why Nielsen is stepping up its social skills, and offering additional insights into the performance of content posted by accounts officially associated with TV programming.

Through an enhancement known as “Owned Content Performance,” the measurement giant is going to more closely track the success and failure of content generated by “owned accounts.”

With the new offerings, content stakeholders from networks to talent should have an easier time identifying more engaging pieces of content, which contribute to their overall social ratings.

Today, content stakeholders would be lost without social, says Sean Casey, president, Nielsen Social.

“Social media has become an invaluable touchpoint for TV marketers and talent to engage with their program audiences in season and off,” according to Casey.

Nielsen’s Social Content Ratings system shows just how central social has become for TV viewers, nationwide.

Over the three weeks leading up to the fall TV season, Nielsen found that 142,000 pieces of content generated more than 154 million engagements, likes, comments, re-posts, and the like across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

The data also holds important lessons for content stakeholders.

For example, while text-only posts remain the most common media type created by owned accounts across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter -- representing 35% of all owned content -- they only account for 8% of all owned engagement, per Nielsen.

By contrast, video and static images comprise about 56% of owned content, but perform at a higher level -- accounting for 83% of all owned engagements.

The data also illustrates the importance of curating posts to harness the distinct benefits of different social platforms.

For instance, video posts on Facebook and Twitter are more than 10% and 20% more engaging than images, respectively. Yet, on Instagram, image posts overtake video posts by more than 30% in terms of engagements.

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