Keith Hindle – CEO of Digital & Branded Entertainment at FremantleMedia, producers of ‘X Factor,’ ‘Britain’s Got Talent,’ and ‘American Idol’ – told The Guardian last week that advertisers now measure the success of a TV show more by the social engagement it engenders than by ratings.
Via The Guardian:
Hindle added that sponsors would no longer sign up to content unless they had confidence in the social media strategy: “There’s a belief among major advertisers, associated with major pieces of content that the content is a paid media campaign to drive an earned media result. That’s the really interesting shift.
Advertisement“A few years ago, the only things that mattered was ratings. Now what matters more is the level of social engagement around the content.”
While TV advertisers are now requiring that they be built into a show’s multiplatform strategy (and some networks, such as Bravo, do this extremely well), it is difficult to believe that they are still not foremost concerned with ratings. Hindle’s comments may be exaggerated, but they are certainly indicative of how things are trending.