Facebook Delivers Viewer Engagement Reports To TV Networks

cagraham writes "Facebook has started delivering custom weekly reports to select TV networks, detailing the total amount of social interactions related to individual TV episodes.According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is using its data analytics to track the amount of times an episode is liked, shared, or mentioned each week. The data is then anonymized and delivered to networks. This comes a week after Twitter announced they were pursuing deals with major networks as well. Facebook may be trying to establish itself as a modern alternative to the traditional Nielsen ratings system, the current benchmark for gauging viewership."

Comments

Breaking Bad

[CohibaVancouver]

If my 'feed' is anything to go by, the entire planet was watching "Breaking Bad" last night.

Re:Breaking Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to find new friends.

Re:Breaking Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I had never even heard of Breaking Bad until the last few weeks when suddenly a stupid television show became front page news. Must be a slow news month, or more likely standards have just hit a new low for what passes as "news" these days.

Re:Breaking Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm... watching one of the best shows ever rather than reality TV is GOOD thing. They might actually be people worth knowing.

Re:Breaking Bad

[istartedi]

Has anyone made a "Breaking Bad in 5 seconds" video? I'd like to see that. I've never seen the show, since I don't pay for TV; but I've been around someone who was enthusiastic about it. So far, just from the incredible bleed over into popular culture I've surmisd that the 5 second video would go something like this: WW: OMG, I've got cancer. I've got to provide for my family. (cut to scene of meth lab) (cut to various scenes of people getting shot and stuff) (cut to scene where WW dies) (cut to scene where family members see a stack of money on a table). Am I really missing anything?

Who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, marketing research groups could be gleaning this kind of data from Slashdot too if they wanted to but no one gives a fuck. How much do people know about you from your Slashdot profile? Only as much as you let them know. Why are "social network" sites held up to a different standard?

Re:Who gives a fuck?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Seriously, marketing research groups could be gleaning this kind of data from Slashdot too if they wanted to but no one gives a fuck. How much do people know about you from your Slashdot profile? Only as much as you let them know. Why are "social network" sites held up to a different standard?

Well, I suspect that I'm talking to a particularly belligerent wall here; but somebody else might read it: 'social' networks are explicitly and fundamentally, designed to produce profiles based both on what you provide and what people you have real-world connections with provide (eg. people who don't even have facebook accounts; but are still tagged and machine-visioned in the image libraries of people who do). Your Slashdot-type profile is probably more vulnerable to a clever analyst than casual inspection would suggest; but the value of information provided by 3rd parties on the system about you is overwhelmingly lower, leaving the question of how 'knowable' you are much more in your hands.

Also, of course, 'real name' policies are a fairly obvious attempt to both extirpate dupes and ACs (presumably because the quality of discussion is already low enough, and because uniques with attached data are worth more as eyeballs); but also quash pseudonyms in the process. Again, many pseudonyms are vulnerable to clever or sustained attack; but in casual use they allow the virtues of consistent 'characters' to emerge (Yeah, that guy, he impersonates a fungus on the internet. Fucked if I know...); but leaves it up to you whether to connect that to other parts of your life or not. Some people use pseudonyms; some use pseudonyms by preference but make little or no effort to hide who they are, some post under their real names, up to you.

Snapplization

[TheloniousToady]

We can now look forward to even more product placements on TV, such as the carefully aimed Snapple cups on "America's Got Talent".

Nielsen must be freaking out

[EmperorOfCanada]

Nielsen must be freaking out as this is data that they can't get their hands on; as this data would include almost every form of viewing, pirate, hulu, Netlfix, traditional, etc.

But the data would not be terribly pure for two reasons. If a show like breaking bad(with a youngish audience) were to hire a team of social media gurus and create many incentives to blah blah about the show then they will generate far more buzz per viewer than say Murder She Wrote reruns will generate per viewer both due to the age of the viewers and assuming that Murder She Wrote isn't hiring a crack team of social media experts.

So where this will really blow up is when a crap show completely games social media and then drinks their own cool aid thinking their show is a social media hit. But I have never met an MBA who didn't like the taste of their own urine.

Re:Nielsen must be freaking out

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm honestly a bit surprised that Nielsen is still alive. They are the landline-polling of TV audience metrics. On the pure TV/content industry hell side, you've got things like Tivos and cable boxes, which tend not to leave HQ guessing about who is watching what(Remember Tivo's casual little announcement that 'nipplegate' was the most rewound event in history? What've you got, Nielsen?) On the internet side, you've got your assorted 'social' gatekeepers and search jockeys, who pretty much see every word you type a few hundred milliseconds after you do, and are thus well placed to see who's talking about what.

Where does the exhaustive sample of 'Nielson households' fit in here?

Re:Nielsen must be freaking out

[tlhIngan]

Nielsen must be freaking out as this is data that they can't get their hands on; as this data would include almost every form of viewing, pirate, hulu, Netlfix, traditional, etc.

Not really. Neilsen does live tracking because they're the most likely to watch the ads. PVR, Hulu, pirate, Netflix results don't really matter as they don't affect ad revenues. Neilsen is about ads.

Unless you're talking about a premium channel like HBO which gets all its revenue through subscription revenue, in which case alternate viewing could be important.

In fact, if Neilsen should worry, they need to verify their figures against real time Facebook and Twitter posts. In fact, the networks and such LOVE it when people post online about shows in real time when it airs. It's the only thing the networks have to combat "cord cutting" - imagine how people who download got through today because of everyone who watched the Breaking Bad finale were spoiling it everywhere.

That sort of peer pressure has resulted in more than a few cord cutters to get back on the teat - they just were so fed up of the delay between it airing and when they watch it that they gave up. (And we're only talking about hours here between airing and when the first torrents pop up - but generally that means you schedule the download to happen overnight and try to catch it the next day, at which point everyone else has talked about it. By the time you watch it that evening, you're a day late and everyone's onto the next show).

I never watched Breaking Bad until late August, and finished the penultimate episode the very Sunday morning. It was an awful few hours between the penultimate and finale.

Re:Nielsen must be freaking out

[grahamm]

Why do networks love it when people comment online in realtime? if someone is sending tweets or posting on Facebook then the show is not holding their attention. Unless they are waiting for the ad breaks to post online, in which case they are not paying attention to the advertisers.

Not Scientific Sample

[Anonymous Coward]

Networks want people to watch their shows so those same people watch commercials. They want ratings from Nielsen so they have a well respected third party estimating the eyeballs each commercial gets to justify advertising rates. Facebook's report doesn't provide that.

Besides, this is clearly a self-selecting sample. There may be some tiny value to the networks in assessing popularity, but Nielsen Ratings will still remain king because they actually attempt to identify "C+3 ratings", the number of viewers who watch commercials within three days, via random sampling.

Does this account for FB thumbs-downs?

[themushroom]

The old saying is that if you had a good experience you'll tell one person but if you have a bad experience you'll tell ten. Does this system take the word "sucked" after the name of a program into account? Because if networks think that everyone's watching Stupid Sitcom because people have been talking about how inane the commercials make it out to be, they're missing the point. Nielsen monitors how many people change the channel, while going by Facebook results (by tally, not by content) doesn't represent those click-offs.

Not that I care if a network making a crappy show thinks it's hot shit or anything, but they could be giving more airtime to underrated good shows rather than putting more emphasis on lousy shows everyone's dissing on.

About time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Privacy issues aside, this can only be a good thing. The Nielsen system has been responsible for the death of many a good show before its time.

**way** better than Nielsen's method

[globaljustin]

marketing research groups could be gleaning this kind of data

You have to understand...as of **right now** the overarching, decades old industry-standard is the Nielsen Ratings.

Avail yourself of the wikipedia page on it and you will be enlightened.

Ex: Nielsen's standard method is to have viewers in each room with a TV enter their presence on a remote and this is what **Billions** of dollars of ad revenue, the decisions to 'renew' ever single TV show we've ever love...

all of these vital decisions...Left to boneheaded Nielsen research that was obsolete when they thought it up in the Eisenhower administration!

Look, it really is so bad that virtually *anything* is an improvement. Facebook.com is for better or worse a great way to understand what their users (rapidly becoming more representative) watch on TV...and more importantly what they *want* to watch more of and are motivated to **seek out on their own**

Nielsen isn't even in this ballpark...they're swindlers pure and simple...not 'research' by any professional standard

if you've ever had a beloved show canceled flying in the face of all logic, just look up Nielsen's methods and cry alone for awhile...