Today Nielsen announced that they’re expanding the scope of their Twitter TV ratings by adding Facebook content to their methodology. The new ratings will be called Nielsen’s “Social Content Ratings,” as opposed to just the Nielsen Twitter TV ratings. The ratings will take public program related Facebook posts into account, with plans to add Instagram at a later date. Sean Casey, president of Nielsen Social, says in a statement that the ratings are in line with their mission to provide comprehensive views of what’s happening on social media:
The development of Social Content Ratings reflects Nielsen’s commitment to continually adapt our services to meet the needs of the industry and is part of Nielsen’s ongoing effort to evolve our measurement to reflect the total audience across screens and platforms. Nielsen Social measurement is evolving to provide a comprehensive, standardized picture of how consumers are responding to program content through social media, wherever and whenever.
Nielsen’s new metrics will build upon their current methodology including social media authorship, engagement, reach, and demographics, adhering to all industry standards and privacy regulations.
There are other ratings models that currently take Facebook and other social media into account, like ListenFirst Media‘s Digital Audience Ratings (DAR), which measures engagement across platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and even Wikipedia to gauge viewers’ interest in and consumption of programming.
Jason Klein, CEO of ListenFirst, told Lost Remote that they’ve been measuring engagement across those platforms since 2012, and “added in private conversation data from Facebook last year, more than six months before today’s announcement,” he said via email.
Nielsen’s new Social Content Ratings will be available in the first of this year in all markets where the Nielsen Twitter ratings are available, including Australia, Italy, and Mexico.