Fox has announced a major partnership with analytics shop trueAnthem to track social TV across their properties. The announcement comes just as the fall TV season is about to kick into high gear and social TV buzz will surely follow. The “research and technology partnership” will be “focused on tracking the social sharing of FOX’s digital television content and measuring its social influence,” according to their announcement. We interviewed Judit Nagy, Vice President of Digital Analytics for Fox about this important dive into social TV analytics.
Almost every major network is already working with a social TV analytics company to figure out how to leverage buzz about their shows to drive viewers, engagement, content creation and of course ad sales. Fox’s relationship with truAnthem will help take their social TV success from last year and learn from it to grow it even more over the coming year.
Nagy described how important this relationship is, what we can expect to see come out of it and why this partnership differs a bit from the work they do with the social TV analytics companies we often cover. “They do not capture the amount of video content shared around the shows,” Nagy tells Lost Remote below. They’re also planning on launching a white paper at some point.
Lost Remote: Why did Fox decide to launch this partnership with trueAnthem?
Judit Nagy: Social TV measurement consists of three major elements; 1) social share of voice in terms of social comments, 2) type of sentiment created around the shows, and 3) the value of earned media via social sharing or pass-along. Partnering with trueAnthem will allow us to capture the amount of social sharing done around any FOX digital content, calculate the value of earned media; and identify key influencers.
LR: How does trueAnthem’s social TV analytics work?
Nagy: trueAnthem’s social plug-in works with various short-form FOX video content, which will allow us to capture the path of social sharing onto key social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus; Linked-In. trueAnthem provides a seamless solution to track social pass-along and capture the value of earned media.
LR: Will Fox be tracking social as it relates to traditional ratings or is this just about optimizing your marketing? Will you be publishing infographics, findings on the results?
Nagy: Our main goal is to capture all social activities around sharable FOX content. Naturally, it will allow us to see the most shared video or ad content for each tracked FOX show, where results will be applied to various areas of our core businesses. The industry as a whole is trying to make sense between television ratings and the amount of social engagement generated by viewers, and by working with trueAnthem, we add one more missing piece of the puzzle. Yes, we are planning to create top-findings and possibly a white paper with trueAnthem in the coming months.
LR: Do you work with Bluefin Labs, Trendrr, SocialGuide, or Networked Insights? If so, how and how is it different?
Nagy: We have great relationships with these companies and we do work with many of them. While Bluefin and others capture the amount of commentary around our television shows, they do not capture the amount of video content shared around the shows. Commenting about a show and others seeing those comments vs. sharing a piece of content and others able to view it or pass it along again, are not the same things, in terms of measurement techniques or results derived from them.