Tag: Social TV

Time for Television Ratings to Get Social

The start of the current fall television season has highlighted the importance of social media in driving awareness and tune-in for new and established TV series as audience consumption habits continue to fragment across device and social platforms. With multiple apps being promoted by shows, networks and even TV service providers for checking-in to these broadcasts as well as fan pages and hashtags used to centralize the conversation around each episode, there is a growing need for audience measurement beyond the traditional Nielsen ratings.

The Nielsen Company is the de facto provider of the ratings system used to determine how the 60 billion in television advertising dollars are allocated amongst broadcast and cable network line-ups. The company relies on the behavior of 50,000 Americans across its sample of 25,000 households to extrapolate ratings for the nearly 115 million households with television sets in the U.S.  The resulting ‘share’ of audience Nielsen attributes to each TV episode on a nightly basis ultimately effects which series get renewed or cancelled (for a great primer on how Nielsen’s TV ratings system works, check out this ESPN-style animated video on the topic from local Washington, DC creative agency JESS3).

Though with the number of households with television sets dropping for the first time in 20 years, on-demand video platforms taking viewing time away from traditional television and multi-tasking across multiple screens a growing reality, traditional means of measurement are failing to capture this evolving consumer behavior. While Nielsen is working on ways to aggregate this distributed viewing audience through its ‘extended screen’ initiative, the company isn’t measuring the actual activity on the social web occurring around the episodes being watched. This represents an opportunity for services that provide a platform for social engagement as well as companies that aggregate TV show-related conversations from across the internet to address this information gap. While both Facebook and Twitter have their own media-related initiatives that allow fans to interact with one another as well as with the shows and their stars, neither network focuses on quantifying this engagement on an industry-wide basis.

Services like BuddyTV, GetGlue, Miso and Tunerfish, on the other hand, have been built in a manner that can address this need. Having ridden the check-in wave popularized by location-based service Foursquare, these event-based social networks (EBSNs) capture when consumers are tuning in to watch television and aggregating the activity being generated around each show within their respective apps and websites. GetGlue, the largest of these services, already has more users checking-in to the most popular shows on its platform than the size of Nielsen’s entire sample audience, making it statistically valuable to the ratings conversation.

Even though the demographic make-up of EBSN users is not representative of the overall U.S. population (which Nielsen does try to mirror in selecting its households), check-in services make up for this by highlighting the actual activity of the most desirable audience to advertisers (18 to 49 year-olds) and not just projections. For advertisers this represents a unique opportunity to target these consumers in a highly engaged environment by extending their TV advertising for particular shows to the equivalent social web channels and mobile devices. To bring the desired scale to this type of opportunity though, these social environments need to be aggregated somehow.

That’s where companies like Bluefin Labs, General Sentiment, Social Guide and Trendrr come into play by not only aggregating publicly available social commentary but filtering and normalizing this data from disparate sources (EBSNs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to identify the underlying sentiment of a broader range of web users. This provides a more complete view of the engagement associated with shows across the social web in real-time as well as beyond the initial airing time slot of each episode. The resulting findings might be just the data set necessary to become the de facto social television rating to rival Nielsen.

Even with Nielsen’s recent ratings calculation glitch, it’s unlikely that the company will be replaced as the ratings system for the television advertisers industry in the near future. But as audiences for traditional TV continue to disperse across more mediums and content experiences, the need to compliment the ratings discussion, and ultimately how advertising dollars are allocated, with additional data will only continue to increase. This creates an opportunity for actual engagement-related metrics to gain equal footing with passive stream and tune-in projections over time.

So how do we get there?

While results from a recent NM Incite (a Nielsen/McKinsey company) study confirms the correlation between social activity and TV ratings, the opportunity for social television start-ups is in identifying and explaining the variations in popularity between Nielsen’s most highly rated shows and those series being discussed online and how to benefit from it.

The combination of tune-in and conversation activity make EBSNs the most compelling data set for social television ratings. The challenge is that the company that popularized the check-in, Foursquare, only recently passed 10 million users worldwide itself, a far cry from Facebook’s 150 million users in the U.S. alone. For EBSNs to reach Facebook-like adoption, they need distribution and a more automated process for socializing around TV shows (beyond the manual download of apps and checking-in to services). While BuddyTV and Miso have partnered with AT&T’s television service offering U-verse, GetGlue and Miso have integrations underway with satellite television provider DirecTV that enables subscribers to check-in to shows through DirecTV’s remote control. Other companies, such as Dijit, are by-passing traditional TV service providers entirely and competing for consumers with their own universal remote that layers in check-in functionality.

What social analytic companies lacks in proprietary data, they make-up for in business model by already working with advertisers and media companies to help them understand the volume and sentiment of chatter occurring online about their brands and shows across the social web. Gaining access to data on an exclusive basis from EBSNs and other social communities would be a key differentiator in winning the battle for advertising and media clients- the same companies that subscribe to Nielsen’s television ratings data. With so many companies vying for client dollars and mind share, the social analytics provider that can get the right media outlets partnerships to adopt and distribute their version of social television ratings can become the industry standard through sheer perception and market momentum.

Based on these factors, Trendrr, which launched a TV industry-specific real-time dashboard before the start of the fall television season could be that company. Considering Trendrr’s breadth of data sources (Facebook, GetGlue, Miso and Twitter) and how well they’ve embedded themselves into the online media landscape (partnering with the likes of AdAge, Lost Remote and Mashable to distribute their data and findings), the company is best positioned to become the social television ratings provider of the future.

What are the most likely outcomes?

Absent Trendrr or another one of these start-ups gaining the necessary client or user clout to grow into the de facto social TV ratings provider, the most likely outcome for the companies with the most traction in this market is an acquisition.

If either Facebook or Twitter decided to focus on providing analytics as a value-add to their advertiser and media clients, they would make ideal acquirers of these types of companies. For Facebook, adding a media-oriented check-in service to their massive user base would fit nicely with Facebook’s recent overturns towards the television industry and turn the acquired ESBN into the immediate and undisputed winner in the social television data game. Twitter on the other hand would benefit from acquiring one of the leading social analytics companies, as it would fill a large analytics hole in their offering. Even though the company recently stated its intentions to stay out of the enterprise market, the opportunity might prove to be too lucrative to stay out.

Beyond Twitter, The Nielsen Company is a natural acquirer of a social analytics company since it compliments Nielsen’s existing ratings and research business. With the company having held an initial public offering at the beginning of this year, Nielsen also has the necessary capital to do this.

Beyond these entities, media companies and television platform could benefit from owning one of the EBSNs by leveraging these services to gain insight into user activity and drive additional tune-in for themselves or partners. Yahoo was the first to act on this, acquiring 12-week old IntoNow earlier this year and releasing an iPad app last week that integrates into Yahoo’s Connected TV framework. For GetGlue and Miso, who have raised capital from Time Warner and Google’s venture arm respectively, they already have likely acquirers in the fold. That being said, with the variety of relationships GetGlue (most recently with FX) and Miso (most recently with Showtime) have established with different broadcast and cable networks it’s not out of the question that one of these media partners tries to acquire either company to be their underlying social TV platform. The engagement data would be very valuable to any company negotiating with advertisers during the ‘upfront’ season as a way to justify advertising rates (beyond Nielsen’s rating data) for the next television season or provide brands with a new way to advertise to their intended audiences (for an additional cost or as a make-good).

Stay tuned. This market will only get more interesting.

Rise of the Event-Based Social Networks

With interest in location-based social networks (LBSNs) hitting an all-time high with Foursquare’s recent funding announcement valuing the company at $115 million, a new type of social networking has emerged that borrows some of the mechanics and incentives from location-based services: event-based social networks (EBSNs). While LBSN users notify their personal networks where they are physically located by “checking-in” to the service, earning virtual badges in the process, EBSN users earn their virtual rewards by identifying themselves to other attendees and participants by also using check-in mechanics, but without having to actually be physically present at the event.

We see from studies and personal experiences that recommendations from social networks do influence our television viewing habits. Combined with the abundant, on-demand nature of information available on the internet today, it’s easy to understand how the changing content consumption habits, from the ‘day after’ to the ‘day of”, have affected the media industry. While much of the demise of print news media can be attributed to these changing habits (and nowhere better explained than on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), it has actually had the opposite effect on live television event broadcasts.  Here is audience data from some of the most widely-known sports and entertainment events from this year that were broadcast live:

  • Golden Globes (January): This year’s television audience was 17 million, 14% higher than in 2009;
  • Grammy Awards January): Almost 27 million viewers tuned in, a 35% increase over last year’s broadcast and the highest TV ratings for the event since 2004;
  • Super Bowl XLIV (February): Became the most watched television program in U.S. history, beating the finale of the TV show ‘M-A-S-H’ with a total audience of over 150 million and an average of over 106 million viewers;
  • Academy Awards (March): Had over 41 million viewers, up 14% over the 2009 Oscars;
  • NBA Finals Game 7 (June): The deciding game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics pulled in a viewership of over 28 million, the largest basketball audience in 12 years (when Michael Jordan won his last of six NBA championships);
  • World Cup Final (July): The finals between Spain and Netherlands became the most-watched soccer game in U.S. history with over 24 million viewers, topping the previous record of 19 million viewers from United States’ match against Ghana in the elimination round only weeks earlier.

While some might argue that the economy (i.e. people staying home more often for entertainment purposes) or content quality (i.e. offensive-minded Super Bowl match-up, the popularity of Lady Gaga and Avatar for the Grammys and Golden Globes/Oscars respectively, deciding game of a classic NBA Finals match-up and final of the most-followed sporting event in the world, the World Cup) are better explanations for this renewed interest in live television programming, the fact is that most of these events are leveraging social media hubs like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube more and more as part of their tune-in marketing campaigns to engage with fans and would-be viewers.

And it’s working. The network effect caused by the interest of the most engaged fans is bringing indifferent audiences on the sideline that are connected to these fans into the viewing experience. The real-time nature of information flow on the web and the ability to extended social connections through Facebook and Twitter has made it increasingly difficult for people to avoid watching or hearing about live television event broadcasts or even attempting to try to watch them in a non-linear, time-shifted manner without having the outcome spoiled by social media channels. Combined with the social pressures around participation, additional audiences are being influenced to engage with these events via social networks.

Some recent engagement figures from Facebook and Twitter seem to confirm this. Facebook has shared that about 30% of all status updates on the site during the U.S. versus England match included a World Cup-related term. More impressively Twitter saw the number of Tweets-per-second (TPS) it handles cross 3,000 as a result of the Lakers beating the Celtics in the NBA Finals. This record was broken a week later on the heels of two World Cup matches that generated almost 3,300 TPS.  To put this into context Twitter’s normal activity is 750 TPS, which is big reason why the service has experienced over 6 hours of downtime since the beginning of the World Cup.

With live television event broadcasting benefiting greatly from social networking, can EBSNs become the next big opportunity in social media?

Even though the most well-known companies in this segment of social networking have positioned themselves in a slightly different manner from one another, at the most basic level Fanvibe, formerly known as FanPulse (sporting events), GetGlue by AdaptiveBlue (home entertainment such as movies, books and music), Hot Potato (general events), Miso by Bazaar Labs (TV shows and movies) and Tunerfish from Comcast (online video and TV shows), among others, all address some type of live event participation through their services. As ReadWriteWeb points out in its recent coverage of some of these apps, their current lack of users adversely affects the social value of their respective networks. With Facebook and Twitter already driving the lion’s share of social media status updates, and check-in functionality becoming a commodity, these EBSNs will need more than virtual badges and threaded conversation capabilities around events to drive adoption.

The “more than” is partnering with the leagues and organizations behind these events as well as the television networks with the broadcast rights. Being promoted by the events or built into the digital experiences of the broadcasts is the ideal way to drive mind share and user growth.  For this reason Tunerfish is best positioned of the group to succeed since it comes out of Comcast, which has the largest television subscriber base, and is in the process of acquiring one of the biggest TV network broadcasters, in the U.S. Being part of Comcast helped Tunerfish land its first promotional partnership with HBO when the service went live last month. Owning NBC could bring a lot more of these types of opportunities to Tunerfish. With an iPad app also in the works from Comcast, adding Tunerfish’s functionality to the application could automate the check-in process for millions of TV viewers across every television show and network available in the U.S.,creating an enviable interest graph.

There is hope for some of the other services as well. AdaptiveBlue, which has been around the longest, probably has the most robust underlying platform. The company leverages semantic technologies to generate social recommendations for its users based on their check-ins and ratings. By covering a broader range of interests than just TV shows and movies and strong platform usage resulting from its recently launched GetGlue iPhone app, AdaptiveBlue can create a much deeper interest graph than some of its competitors. Hot Potato could find early success amongst sports leagues as its founding team comes from MLBAM, the digital media arm of Major League Baseball. That being said, MLB, which is the most tech-savvy of all the major sports leagues, did announce it has integrated its own check-in functionality into its iPhone app just last week. Miso’s best opportunity for success is tied to the investment it took from Google Ventures last month. With the announcement of GoogleTV earlier this year, Miso should have the inside track in doing for GoogleTV what Tunerfish could do for Comcast- to be integrated directly into the television guide and discovery experience for set-top boxes.

What’s at stake in becoming the real-time conversation service and recommendation engine for television?

Over $400 billion in television advertising and on-demand video revenues worldwide according to a recent report published by media researcher Futurescape. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts and tweets, live TV event programming such as sports championships and entertainment award shows will only increase in value to broadcasters as produced, series-based programming becomes even more accessible on-demand in a non-linear viewing experience. Live television represents the best opportunity for advertisers to find and connect with an engaged audience in the present. Combined with real-time status updates, event producers and advertisers can receive immediate feedback from users on their TV viewing experience. This social feedback loop will be critical in delivering better television programming and advertising in the future.

With nearly half of Facebook users simultaneously watching television while on the site and Twitter showing its impact during the recently concluded NBA Finals and World Cup, it’s their game to lose at the moment as each brings a respective interest and sentiment data set that can add tangible value to traditional TV audience metrics. For EBSNs to succeed they will need to leverage Facebook and Twitter’s platforms as distribution channels, much like Foursquare did initially, in order to drive utility for its users and interest for their own services. By becoming the interface between users and their Facebook and Twitter accounts, ESBNs have an opportunity to get users to build sub-networks within their respective platforms that are unique and more valuable to those on Facebook and Twitter- once again, something Foursquare is starting to do with its own LBSN. The ultimate benefit in evolving a platform in this manner is that an event-based social network can become the audience and data provider to event creators and distributors as well as advertisers while delivering better programming recommendations and socially targeting advertising to its users in the process.

Whatever the eventual outcome, it will unfold live.

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Where Does Online Video Go From Here?

Google’s acquisition of YouTube in October 2006 was supposed to usher in a new era of opportunity for video creation, distribution and monetization that leveraged the power of the internet. Now, three and a half years later, the biggest benefactors of the boom in online video consumption have primarily been YouTube’s founders and investors as profitability still eludes YouTube and revenues are scant in comparison for most others in the online video ecosystem. With webisode creators closing up shop or changing business models, television networks removing or withholding their content from partners and distribution channels, and well-funded online video aggregators Joost and Veoh shuttering their businesses, what role will the internet play in the video content experience going forward?

Here are today’s realities:

  • Television will not go the way of the newspaper industry. Clay Shirky, an internet and media consultant and professor at NYU, recently suggested that the television industry faced the same disruption in its business models as newspapers are experiencing today. What he failed to acknowledge was that the production value of video content creation cannot be commoditized in the same manner written content can (Avatar didn’t become the highest grossing movie of all-time by cutting corners on cost). In fact the cable industry seems to be strengthening its position with consumers- delivering record audiences for sports leagues, including the largest audience for a single cable network event (last year’s Vikings vs. Packers game on ESPN) and the signing of Conan O’Brien to host his new later night show on TBS. This performance is leading advertisers to commit an even greater share of their television ad budgets to cable networks in the coming upfront season.
  • There are no free lunches for online video consumers. Cord-cutting is somewhat of a fallacy. While a lot has been written about the growing minority of consumers who have given up their cable subscriptions in favor of accessing video content over the web from the likes of Hulu and Netflix, the fact of the matter is that consumers are still paying their cable or phone company to access this video content over their networks. Though monthly internet access can cost a quarter of the price of a monthly cable subscription bill, as they say, you get what you pay for. Without the ability to watch live events (American Idol, Super Bowl, etc.), or specific content from cable networks (Mad Men on AMC, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia on FX, etc.), in addition to no quality of service considerations for video playback on the web (when was the last time you experienced buffering while watching television through your cable service provider?), we are starting to see stories about consumers who have given up on the internet-only video experience.
  • The internet will be one of several distribution channels, not a panacea. While many consumers expect to find all content online, and for free, these people tend to forget that television’s economics continue to drive the decision-making process for broadcasters. It’s for this reason I’ve previously suggested companies such as Blip.tv should look to traditional television networks to extend the distribution and reach for their clients’ webisodic content. With the launch of the iPad and associated apps from video providers, and discussions around broadcasters working together to build a mobile television network, the number of ways consumers will be able to access movies and TV shows will continue to proliferate. While this should drive additional content consumption opportunities for consumers, it will be done so on the television industry’s terms.

And tomorrow’s opportunities:

  • Delivering “DVR economics” will bring more premium video online. For television networks to get comfortable with making more of their content available online after its original broadcast, the revenue opportunity needs to be comparable to what broadcasters are generating from their DVR-viewing audience. This makes sense since watching video online and via DVR are both non-linear viewing experiences intended for consumers to catch-up on missed shows. This will be an important metric for online video services to achieve in order to be considered distribution partners for broadcasters and networks going forward. With online consumers showing a willingness to sit through additional advertisements and both Hulu and TV Everywhere expected to charge for certain content, achieving parity with DVR economics seems to be an achievable goal as the dual revenue model  employed by the television industry (users paying for access to programming in addition to being presented with commercials while watching that programming) proliferates into new channels. This could become a recipe for enabling virtual MSOs like Apple TV and others to gain access to television shows that haven’t been previously made available online. Over time a bifurcated business model could emerge between real-time and time-shifted viewing with different price points for each experience.
  • Social TV will be the key to enhancing the video viewing experiences. Because the internet is a proactive, lean-forward experience most of the time, it is best leveraged as a companion to live event broadcasts to create a social television experience. With more and more people spending time online while watching television there’s an opportunity for programmers to engage audiences by allowing viewers to share their experience with friends or other fans in a meaningful way, creating larger and more loyal audiences. Events such as the Grammys and Oscars have benefited greatly by combining the social features of Facebook and Twitter with live broadcasts. Apps such as Hot Potato and Miso have been launched to aggregate these types of experiences on behalf of viewers, though broadcasters are now developing these services on their own as well. Regardless of the social network or app being leveraged, these services should be incorporated into devices such as mobile phones and tablets, and not necessarily directly into the television set via TV widget platforms, to not inhibit either experience individually and allow any service to compete for audience attention.
  • Unified audience measurement will be paramount. While video ad networks have probably been the greatest benefactors of the growing online video ecosystem, with over $90 million invested between BrightRoll, TidalTV and YuMe in Q1 of this year and Tremor Media earlier this week, until there is a way to merge audiences across different platforms (television, laptop, mobile phone, etc.) online video revenues will remain insignificant in comparison to broadcast television. Nielsen announced a solution to address this problem earlier this year that is expected to be rolled out for the fall television season. Looking to make buying video inventory online comparable to traditional television, two different online video ad networks have partnered with third-parties to create  an online equivalent to Gross Rating Points, called iGRP, which is used to sell prime-time ad inventory, to match online audiences with that of traditional television. As agencies and advertisers get more comfortable with quantifying users online in a similar manner as is currently being done through traditional television broadcasting more ad dollars will continue to flow to online video. This will allow online ad networks to compete for even more upfront ad dollars during TV’s traditional outlay season.
  • Opportunities exist for online video technology providers- to an extent. Brightcove, founded before YouTube ever existed, is arguably the most well know enterprise technology provider to the online video industry. In raising a fourth round of funding recently, the company disclosed it expected worldwide revenues of $50 million this year. Considering the company already works with most major media companies, what does this tell us about the market opportunity for the most important component of the online video ecosystem? If you concur with Frost & Sullivan analyst Dan Rayburn’s estimate of $300 million in total revenues for online video platforms this year, then it’s not that significant. It doesn’t mean that Brightcove won’t have a successful IPO, it’s just that for the amount of capital the company has raised ($100 million) the revenue potential ought to be 10 times Frost & Sullivan’s estimates. That being said, companies that can automate content encoding (i.e. Elemental Technologies) and distribution (i.e. TubeMogul) across disparate platforms and formats, provide rights management (i.e. Widevine) across access points and deliver aggregated audiences and reporting for advertisers will have the best chance for success, though primarily through acquisition. Companies such as Akamai will be the biggest benefactors as they can leverage their public currency to add these services to their CDN delivery business, allowing them to move further up the value chain with clients.

Add it all together and where do we end up? Most consumers don’t differentiate between what content they are accessing, broadcast network television (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) or cable networks (Discovery, ESPN, MTV, etc.), since in today’s digital environment you need a set-top box from a cable, satellite or telecom company to access any television programming. The same will hold true for how consumers access programming tomorrow, be it over dedicated coaxial cables, wireless carrier networks or over the public internet. As such, consumers will have tiered pricing (as either a bundle, how monthly subscriptions are currently provided, or a la carte as Apple is attempting to do) that incorporates how content is being accessed (real-time or on-demand) and from where (television, laptop or mobile phone). Whatever the model, viewers will be able to interact with audiences around the content, creating a more fulfilling experience. Advertisers will benefit from better audience targeting capabilities already being used on the web today across all these viewing outlets with the added value of unified reporting.

While the nirvana of free access to all video content over the internet will probably never be realized (except for one-off cases like YouTube’s wildly successful live streaming of a cricket tournament) the internet will play a major role in improving the online video experience from both a consumption and monetization perspective.

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