Social TV Research
The latest studies and research into social media, television and the second screen.
Grammys rock the ratings, set social TV record
Update: Fueled by Whitney Houston’s death, last night’s Grammy Awards attracted 39 million viewers — the most since 1984, according to Nielsen. And it set an all-time social TV record with 13 million social comments, according to Bluefin Labs. Last week, the Super Bowl hit a record-breaking 12.2 million comments, but the record didn’t stand for long.
According to data from Trendrr, the Grammys fell just short of the Super Bowl in social TV numbers — but not by far. Trendrr’s “activity score” was 17,122,439, compared to the Super Bowl’s 17,487,241.
TV ‘cord cutters’ and ‘cord nevers’ increase, finds Nielsen study
A new report by Nielsen reveals a rise in homes with over-the-air TV and a broadband connection, but no cable, satellite or IPTV service. It’s still a small segment of the overall U.S. population (5% of households), it’s grown 22.8% over the last year. While this group still watches much more traditional TV than broadband-delivered video, it watches half as much TV and streams twice as much video as the general population.
Biggest, record-setting social media moments of the Super Bowl
Updated: The Giant’s fourth-quarter victory help the Super Bowl become the biggest social TV event in history so far. Bluefin Labs says it counted 9.3 million social media comments, surpassing the previous all-time record high of 3 million held by the MTV VMAs. Trendrr said this year’s Super Bowl had approximately 5X the social activity over last year. The data is still coming in, and here’s our early crack at the biggest social media moments of the Super Bowl…
Super Bowl will be a big second screen moment
Note: Make sure you’re following @lostremote for our live-tweets during the Super Bowl for the best social media moments during the game.
Nearly 60 percent of mobile phone users will be checking their devices during the Super Bowl, according to a new survey by Velti and Harris Interactive. And about half (47%) of all viewers say they expect to check up to 10 times during the game. “There’s no going back now from the fact that the Super Bowl is truly a two-screen experience,” said Krishna Subramanian, Chief Marketing Officer of Velti.
Most-tweeted moments of the State of the Union (infographic)
Twitter has put together an infographic analyzing the tweets from last night’s State of the Union debate. It counted 766,681 tweets that referenced the State of the Union or one of its hashtags, as well as 548 tweets from members of Congress. The top moment was President Obama’s joke, “I guess it was worth crying over spilled milk,” which generated 14,131 tweets-per-minute.
‘American Idol’ breaks social TV premiere record [Infographic]
American Idol premiered last night, and the numbers were outstanding on social. According to Bluefin Labs, there were a record 518k comments compared to Jersey Shore’s launch, which had only 410k comments. The premiere also beat the most social episode of the X-Factor, which they said had 391k comments (see infographic below). The question now remains if The Voice’s season two — which premieres Superbowl night — will score big ratings and social TV comments. Buzz around the game might take away from the premiere, but a guaranteed enormous audience might still make the 518k number look tiny.
Analyst: Netflix is the 15th largest TV ‘network’ in US
Americans spend a lot of time watching Netflix — we’ve all heard the stories of how much bandwidth it eats up — and one analyst has crunched the numbers with some surprising results. If Netflix were a network, it would rank 15th in total minutes watched, explains Richard Greenfield with BTIG.
“Netflix streaming usage is exploding and is far, far bigger than traditional media executives give it credit for,” he said. “[It] had more hours of viewing in October than FX, HGTV and History and had more than 2x the viewer hours of CNN, Discovery, MSNBC and BET.” And if you isolate the numbers to just Netflix subscribers’ homes, it would rank #2 behind CBS in total minutes, he says.
The #1 social TV event of 2011 is… [Infographic]
As the year is coming to an end we’re going to start seeing a lot of interesting data on 2011, the first full year that social TV really started to mature. Trendrr has released a fun infographic on the top “tent-poles” of 2011.
Surprisingly perhaps, the Royal Wedding came out slightly ahead of the MTV VMAs as having the most social activity (both over 5.5 million) for the year.
‘Fear Factor’ dominates social TV chatter [Infographic]
Bluefin Labs has provided us with another fun infographic showing how many people commented on the premiere of NBC’s Fear Factor last night. After a six-year hiatus, the show returned to the airwaves with a bang, both in ratings and social buzz.
The 8 p.m. episode earned 218k comments and the 9p.m. generated 185k comments. Bluefin pointed out that, “for comparison, the season premiere of The X Factor generated 190K social media comments. (And The X Factor is currently the year’s #1 Social TV show in series programming, i.e., not counting sports and special events.)” On the ratings front, the show scored a 3.2 rating in the 18-49 demo at 8 p.m. — the best non-sports number in that slot since 2008 — and a 3.5 at 9 p.m.
Social TV recap of the ABC News Iowa GOP Debate [Infographic]
Another debate has come and gone, and the Wall Street Journal has admitted that “free media (is) helping to define” the GOP primary. Bluefin Labs, has again speedily provided us with there analysis on the chatter from last night’s debate. Audiences made 235,659 social media comments about this debate, the 4th most commented-on debate this season so far (competing with HBO and Showtime on a Sunday night probably wasn’t the best move). Audiences commented about Romney the most out of any candidate, followed closely by Gingrich in second place. Perry drew the least amount of comments in social media.
When Twitter impacts TV ratings the most [study]
First on Lost Remote: Nielsen released an early glimpse today into its research project measuring Twitter’s impact on TV ratings. As we reported back in October, Nielsen’s first study — which did not include Twitter data — revealed that a 9% increase in buzz volume (blogs, boards and public Facebook posts) corresponded to a 1% increase in ratings among the 18-49 year-old demo. But in recent weeks, Twitter has provided Nielsen with loads of data to measure its impact on ratings.
Fox, MTV take November as most social TV networks
Trendrr has released its November numbers tracking the most social TV networks and shows, and Fox and MTV lead the list in social share of voice.
As far as the top broadcast TV shows, Fox took three of the top five spots in November…
‘Cord nevers’ will drive drop in pay TV subs, says analyst
The debate over cord-cutting reminds me of the DVR commercial-skipping debate several years ago. But now a respected analyst has weighed in with a new twist, cutting his projection of pay TV subscribers to a loss of 200,000 for next year, down from his earlier forecast of a gain of 250,000.
Credit Suisse analyst Stefan Anninger says it’s not about people cutting their service, but never signing up for it in the first place. “The real challenge to the pay TV business model are behaviorally-driven cord-nevers,” he said in a new report.
Study questions impact of social buzz on TV ratings
The media buyer Optimedia US has released a study that concludes that a show’s advance buzz doesn’t predict its ratings performance. The study measured Tweets, Facebook likes, Google searches and Klout scores ahead of a show’s premiere. It found the top 5 new shows in buzz — X-Factor, Playboy Club, New Girl, Whitney and Charlie’s Angels — haven’t necessarily translated into ratings.
The study, published in the WSJ but not readily available on Optimedia’s site (we’ve asked for a copy), seems limited to the Fall season’s shows. Optimedia exec Greg Kahn said that buzz is likely a better measure of the network’s marketing efforts…
Regis’ farewell sets social high bar for morning TV
Regis Philbin’s farewell from morning television today — which was well-attended by many Twitter-enabled stars in the audience — was the “#1 social TV telecast among all morning talk shows year to date,” Bluefin Labs concluded today. Many stars (and even John McCain) tweeted their well-wishes, from Howie Mandel and Piers Morgan to Rachael Ray. That all added up to a surge of social comments. Here’s BlueFin Lab’s infographic on it all:
Twitter says TV ratings connection is becoming clearer
Twitter’s Chloe Sladden (@chloes) spoke at yesterday’s Social TV Summit, and one of the highlights is her discussion around social media’s impact on TV ratings — one of the most popular topics at the event.
Just as Facebook is working with Nielsen, Sladden said Twitter recently shared a bunch of data with the ratings company. She shared an early glimpse into the results…
Second-screen click rates top 10 percent, says TVPlus
Sure, lots of people use their mobile phones and tablets in front of TV — 80% in fact — but how do second-screen apps perform? TVPlus revealed today at the Social TV Summit that it’s seeing click-through rates of companion TV content on its iPad app “north of 10 percent.”
That’s an impressive number. By companion content, TVPlus defines it as “unique pieces of related content delivered synchronously on a second screen while users watch a broadcast.” The key word here, synchronously.
Facebook: ‘Pretty confident’ we can help drive TV ratings
Facebook’s Andy Mitchell told the audience at the Social TV Summit on Wednesday that he’s “pretty confident” that his company’s integration with USA Network helped drive incremental ratings for the show Psych. He provided some impressive numbers from Facebook’s partnership with Nielsen to help back it up.
Study finds mainstream media not using Twitter effectively
Mainstream media Twitter accounts rarely retweet others, don’t respond to people and largely focus on promoting their own links, finds a new study from Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs. The study examined tweets from @nytimes, @cnn, @foxnews, @msnbc and several other larger media accounts, and it revealed “limited use of the institution’s public Twitter identity, one that generally takes less advantage of the interactive and reportorial nature of the Twitter.”
Tablets blow away desktops in video engagement
Here’s yet another study that shows that tablets are made for video. Ooyala found that tablets averaged nearly 30 percent more viewing time per play than desktops, and tablet users completed videos at double the desktop rate. And most surprising, “Viewer engagement was generally higher on mobile devices (excluding tablets) than on desktops— even for long form videos.” Here’s the chart:
