SOURCE: Networked Insights

October 28, 2008 08:00 ET

New Report Shows "the Social" Matters for Advertisers

First Measuring the Social Report Focuses on Online Interactions to Determine Top 10 Television Shows Among Online Audience

MADISON, WI--(Marketwire - October 28, 2008) - Networked Insights, a provider of customer intelligence across social media, today released the first Measuring the Social report, detailing the top 10 television shows among online audiences as compared to Nielsen's weekly television ratings. This is the first of a series of reports that will take a revealing look at several topics and trends by measuring social interactions online.

Today, online measurement generally involves listening to the 15% of people that post content online. While this section of the audience is important, the other 85%, that Networked Insights uncovers, is interacting in other ways equally as valuable when analyzing audience behavior online -- reading, rating, sharing, linking and inviting.

In the early days of the Web, when sites were one-way and static, audience measurement was based on eyeballs, then shifted to transactions as the Web became more complex, which painted a more accurate picture of online behavior. Now, understanding true online behavior is about understanding the social, measuring all the different ways people are interacting online. This also includes the important metric of influence for each interaction -- for example, Tiger Woods sharing a golf video carries far more weight than an everyday golf enthusiast taking the same action.

This phenomenon is highlighted in the first of a series of Networked Insights Measuring the Social reports. The report is focused on broadcast television shows, comparing Nielsen's weekly top 10 list to Networked Insights' top 10 based on customer interactions online. The report reveals dramatic differences between the two lists, indicating very little correlation between traditional TV ratings and engagement around these shows online.

Key findings include:

--  Half (5) of the shows in the Networked Insights top 10 list do not
    appear in the Nielsen list: Criminal Minds (2), NCIS (5), Brothers &
    Sisters (6), Cold Case (7) and Family Guy (9)
    
--  Two and a Half Men has a strong hold on the top spot among online
    audiences, but is a distant fifth in the Nielsen ratings. Strong online
    engagement is due to Two and a Half Men's "quote following" -- a high level
    of interaction around specific quotes from the show
    
--  Criminal Minds does not appear on the Nielsen top 10 list, but is the
    second highest rated show on Networked Insights' list likely due to the
    psychological nature of the show and its complex criminal storylines
    
--  Likewise, the second highest rated show on Nielsen's list, Desperate
    Housewives, has very low engagement among the online audience due to the
    lack of passion and pain in the show's content
    

The data shows that online engagement around television shows is drastically different from offline viewership, demonstrating the significance and influence of the social. For an advertiser, measuring the social has shown that popularity on television does not equate to interactions online. This is a different audience that needs to be marketed and advertised to in a unique way from other mediums.

"As ad dollars continue to shift online from older forms of media, like TV, advertisers need to know their audience on a far more granular level," said Dan Neely, founder and CEO of Networked Insights. "Measuring the social finally lets companies see their full online audience instead of just a small sub-section, and this is a key shift in online audience measurement that is making traditional measurement standards, like Nielsen, largely irrelevant online."

Starcom USA -- a leading media agency responsible for media planning and buying for some of the world's largest brands -- has subscribed to the report and will leverage the insights therein towards a better understanding of expanding, diversified consumer behaviors.

"In a world where people's media interactions are changing at an unbelievable rate, we welcome additional perspective on how to strengthen connections with our clients' consumer audiences," said Starcom Vice President/Captivation Director John Lowell. "The report forces us to think about the media landscape differently. Even if video content doesn't originate online, we know its effects live on digitally, resurfacing in the future -- being recycled, edited, recombined -- and, ultimately, being experienced more deeply than we currently account for."

To gather data for this Measuring the Social report, Networked Insights tapped more than 17,000 social media and social networking sites, which included 3.5 million conversations per day and over 120 million unique users. The Networked Insights ratings are compared to Nielsen's ratings among 18- to 49-year-olds as this demographic aligns with the age range of the vast majority of social media users.

For continued insights, subscribe to the Measuring the Social feed at www.socialsights.com.

About Networked Insights

Networked Insights measures the social to drive more effective marketing, by determining who to target and how to convert them. We tell you where they are, the influence they carry and the language they use. Networked Insights gives companies the ability to discover and act upon real-time Customer Intelligence from a wide variety of social media sources, providing truly customer-driven insight based on both content and social behavior generated from customer-to-customer interactions. Previously, companies gained customer information by asking predetermined questions or proving company-generated hypotheses. Networked Insights puts the customer at the center of the intelligence process so that companies can let the customer decide what's important. Networked Insights is privately held and based in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, go to www.networkedinsights.com.