A major undercurrent of the 2011 Fall TV season is the increasing role that social and digital media have on how consumers consume, discover and discuss TV shows. A longstanding question in the social TV space, however, is what impact social media buzz has on traditional television ratings. NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey Company, worked with Nielsen to try to better answer that question. In the study, NM Incite and Nielsen were able to find a statistically significant relationship that shows a correlation between online buzz and TV ratings. This correlation takes place throughout the TV show season, though the impact online buzz can have on ratings can vary based on a season's timeline.
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Unsurprisingly, the strongest correlation takes place with younger demographics, viewers ages 12-17 and 18-34. Nielsen and NM Incite also found a slightly stronger correlation for women over men.
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In the 18-34 demographic, Nielsen found that social media buzz most closely aligned with TV ratings around the time that a show premieres. In other words, the social discussion was most likely to affect or correlate with ratings in the lead-up to a show's launch or its first few episodes. In this scenario, a 9% increase in buzz volume correlates to a 1% increase in ratings.
This relationship weakens as the show's season wears on. At the mid-season mark, a 14% buzz increase correlates with a 1% increase in ratings. Likewise, a 14% increase in buzz corresponds to a 1% increase in ratings in the weeks leading up to a show's finale.
It's important to note, however, that with older viewers, social buzz has a greater impact on ratings toward the end of the season than at the beginning or middle.
Reality shows (competition and non-competition), dramas and comedies were programs that saw the biggest social-to-ratings impact with women 18-34. Men 18-34 showed the strongest correlations with competition reality programs and dramas.
Anecdotally, this matches up with some of the other social TV stats that have shown that programs such as Basketball Wives and The Voice are big social TV hits.
While the data Nielsen and NM Incite presents is interesting, it's shallow. We would like to see specific gains for specific shows -- or specific losses. Moving into the 2011 season, we would also like to see which shows are benefiting most from social buzz and which are cancelled despite strong social media behavior.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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