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Nielsen Adds Facebook To Social TV Ratings (hollywoodreporter.com)
New submitter AnneMackay451 writes with news that the Nielsen media audience measuring company will now include social media buzz into its ratings. From the article: "Nielsen wants to know what TV shows are getting the biggest buzz on Facebook. The measurement firm is expanding its Twitter TV Ratings to include data from Facebook and, eventually, Instagram. The new reports are being rebranded as Nielsen's Social Content Ratings. The new ratings will measure online buzz about TV programs and streaming originals when they launch later this year. Social conversations will be measured both during a show's airtime and 24-hours-a-day."
start buzzing
Given that they don't have access to raw feeds... I don't see how they will get useful data out of this. Their bots aren't going to see everything someone posts, any more than you get to see all of your friends posts (unless you friends pay for the posts to be sponsored content). At best, they're going to get a partial snapshot of the currently trending issues, with no way to validate the statistical significance past a rather large margin of error.
No doubt. But data with a large margin of error is still better than no data at all. What matters is if they can sell that data, margins be damned, at more that what it cost to gather it.
Well, not so much. Remember when Snakes on a Plane was everywhere on social media? Turns out very few people actually went to watch it. Sometimes things trend on social media because people are making fun of it or telling each other how much they hate it.
Yeah, or sooner or later people will figure out Nielson hasn't got accurate data, hasn't in decades, and other than a feel good number they don't really have a product.
Nielson can't measure Netflix, and Netflix laughs at them when they say they can.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Nielson has numbers as good as their error bars. Really. And that is a commodity. The bigger the bars the lesser the commodity, sure, but still a commodity. As to Netflix, since Netflix doesn't show commercials, why would they matter? It might be interesting to know who is watching Netflix most, or instead, or whatever, but that is not the market Nielson is in.
Wait, you read the article?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."