Nielsen launches Twitter TV ratings

Nielsen has launched its Twitter TV Ratings service, claiming it will be the first to measure  total activity and reach of TV-related conversation on the micro-blogging network. 

The ratings service is designed to measure both the number of people tweeting about a TV programme, as well as the people who view those tweets.

Nielsen said that initial analysis indicates that the ration between the two is roughly 1:50, so for every 2,000 people that tweet about a show, 100,000 will see those messages.

However, it added that this varied across programmes and that the tweet ‘audience’ generally decreases as the number of tweet ‘authors’ for an episode increases due to overlap among followers.

“Twitter conversation about live TV in the US has grown dramatically over the past two years – 19 million unique people in the US composed 263 million Tweets about live TV in Q2 2013 alone, a 24% year-over-year increase in authors and a 38% increase in tweet volume,” said Nielsen.

“Until now, only the amount of tweets and respective Twitter authors has been measurable. Without a measurement of the audience of people who view those tweets, TV networks, advertisers and agencies were left wondering about the true reach and influence of TV-related activity on Twitter.”

Nielsen claims that its Twitter TV Ratings system will “complete the picture” by measuring both Twitter TV-specific activity and reach – both unique audience and impressions.

Nielsen and Twitter first announced that they were teaming up to creating a ratings system based on the amount of Twitter conversation around TV shows last December. This shortly followed Nielsen’s acquisition of SocialGuide, which captures Twitter TV activity for all US programming across more than 200 TV channels in English and Spanish.