Measuring viewer “engagement” on TV is simple. You count how many people tune into a given show. It stands to reason that the most popular shows would also be the most popular ones on social networks. But that is not exactly the case. Networked Insights, a company that measures brand engagement on social networks, compared the top ten TV shows for the week of September 22 to 28, as measured by Nielsens, to the most talked about TV shows on social networks, as measured by which ones were most commented on, linked to, shared, or rated. The comparison is for the 18 to 49 year-old demographic.
While there was a 50 percent overlap (Gray’s Anatomy, Dancing With the Stars, Two and a Half Men, CSI Miami, House), the rankings were different. Gray’s Anatomy ranked No. 8 in social network interactions versus No. 1 on broadcast TV. Two and a Half Men, which was ranked No. 5 on TV, was No. 1 on social networks because of its avid online “quote following” (people who follow quotes from the show). Desperate Housewives, No. 2 on TV, doesn’t even rank on social networks, possibly because people don’t like to talk about their guilty pleasures. More surprising is that The Office doesn’t rank in the social network list either, but Criminal Minds does (at No. 2).
If you were a brand marketer, would this matter to you? Would you shift your ad budget to shows that capture more attention after the fact online, or keep it with the tried true on TV proper?
Here are the two lists again because the image above is a little fuzzy. I’ve bolded the shows that appear on both lists.
Neilsen’s Top Ten TV Shows
1. Gray’s Anatomy
2. Desperate Housewives
3. NBC Sunday Night Football
4. Dancing With the Stars
5. Two and a Half Men
6. CSI Miami
7. House
8. Heroes
9. The OT
10. The Office
Networked Insights Top Ten TV Shows On Social Network
1. Two and a Half Men
2. Criminal Minds
3. House
4. CSI Miami
5. NCIS
6. Brothers & Sisters
7. Cold Case
8. Gray’s Anatomy
9. Family Guy
10. Dancing With the Stars
i am a monk and south park guy.
The genre of the tv show also play a part in determining whether or not theare any conversational elements to it. For instance, there are more to discuss about when it comes to reality shows like the American Idol, The Bachelor/Bachelorette
yeah i agree i am reality show junky too. reality show leads to more conversation online.
I don’t know why The Office is not doing as well on line or air. Good to see House on both list.
By the way, typo with Grey’s Anatomy, not Gray.
Part of the reasons is of course pretty obvious… as much as they would like to imagine they have targeted the same demographic – they haven’t. I would wager a good 90% of the people who watch Desperate Housewives religiously are not on the Internet at all, or only for basic email or work needs. Same goes for the sunday night football thing. That demographic just does not have a strong connection to the internet.
The people who do have a strong connection to the internet will chat about the shows that engage them as well as the ones they laugh about (and not in the “it is so funny I have to watch it” sort of way, but rather the “it is so funny that people actually watch this crap” sort of way.) This rather narrow demographic can by themselves shift these numbers quite a bit, by memes and traffic guiding, making the internet numbers fairly useless as a metric.
So sure, the savvy marketer might take advantage of a sudden boost (like two and a half men) by an increased internet presence. Riding the wave, so to speak. But the differences between the viewer number and the internet numbers really do not mean anything at all…
You’d lose your Desperate Housewives wager, Frank. Check out the top torrents for TV show and movie downloads on The Pirate Bay:
http://thepirat...bay.org/top/all
The latest episode of Desperate Housewives is at number 6 overall, and at number 3 for torrents that went up on Monday. This shows that viewers of Desperate Housewives are major users of the Internet for entertainment activities.
I would completely agree with Frank’s comment in regards to demographic. Also, socializing on the net is not watching TV. Emailing your link to 20 of your friends of a funny Family Guy YouTube clip seems way more likely than sitting down with 20 of your friends and watching it. If I was a network boss man though, I would still love to see all those numbers. You can be they are scrambling to figure out why/what people are chatting about so much.
I would think that “Heroes” would be further up on the “social network” graph.
Also what’s the demographic data? Maybe the people who watch Grey’s Anatomy aren’t in those social networks.
My guess is that their ’social network analysis’ probably hasn’t taken into account wiki’s like http://heroeswiki.com or forums at places like newspapers that talk about NFL football. Using social networks as an indicator for web discussion is like looking at a swimming pool and saying anyone who doesn’t swim is inactive and a couch potato.
It would also be interesting to cross reference these lists with the Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent which are:
Ranking TV-show
1 Heroes
2 Dexter
3 House
4 Desperate Housewives
5 Smallville
6 Fringe
7 Grey’s Anatomy
8 Entourage
9 Californication
10 Stargate Atlantis
information via: torrentfreak.com
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I am surprised that Heroes and Football are not on the internet interest list. Both work hard to move viewer to the web.
My wife’s absolute favorite all week is NCIS, but she doesn’t go online at all with regards to any show. I have spent time looking up bios for current and past characters. We were big fans of Jag and immediately started watching NCIS.
If I were to make suggestions to the advertisers I would court the ones with the best total interest. This means the lists just on the numbers given would actually be
Rank Neilson +Social without weighting for influence
1. Two and a Half Men 72.8 Big winner!
2. Criminal Minds 29.7+
3. House 28.5
4. CSI Miami 26.2
5. Gray’s Anatomy 16.9
6. NCIS 15.7+ Would move up with Neilson#
7. Brothers and Sisters 11.6+ Might move up with N#
8. Dancing w/ Stars 10.9+ Might move up with N#
9. Cold Case 10.1
10. Desperate HouseWives9.3+ Would move up with N#
11. NBC Sun Night FBall 9.1+ Would move up with N#
12. Heroes 6.6+ Might move up with N #
13/14, The OT 6.5+ Might move up with N#
13/14. The Office 6.5+ Might move up with N
15.Family Guy 4.9+ Probably stays the same with N#
In reality some weighting system to favor the longer television shows should be used by advertisers. Using either list alone is a gross distortion of the strength of the show.
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Really? More people talk about Two and a Half Men than Family Guy? I find this *incredibly* hard to swallow given the amount of links, references, and recollections about Family Guy float around on the web. Especially in the 18 to 49 bracket. Clearly, something is amiss in the Family Guy (and other?) stat, which is probably the same cause of the infamous canceling of the show years back…I’m a skeptic.
Frank focused on the main point, demographics. Ads on television chase specific demographics as do those online. The one benefit that television theoretically still maintains is that the commercials are visible to viewers. Ads are having trouble maintaining attention and interaction in a social network environment (as evidenced by dropping CPMs). I’d be curious to know what the relevant reach of each medium is with respect to an ad buy (how many people actually notice and recall).
That said, the more interesting question is if there is any incremental value to a brand that advertises during a specific show and targets conversations about that show online (what, a keyword buy or some sort? ad buys on groups devoted to the show?). If that were the case, then the network sales teams should partner with relevant social networks and sell bundles.
I would have thought Entourage and Gossip Girl would have made the list. Maybe they’re just big on the web. Also, I’m not surprised at all to see House up there.
Whatever the reasons, and i suspect demographics and sampling methodology are main ones, its ultimately its more fragmentation for the ‘Brand marketer’ to deal with. Same sized adex pie, but cut into smaller slices.
It’s “GrEy’s” anatomy, not “GrAy’s.”
This is not really a mystery of Roswell proportions. There are, heaven forbid, people whose lives do not revolve around the internet. They do however have jobs, disposable income and watch television, and maybe occasionally surf the net. Whether they are of interest to brand marketers is another matter.
These data generally serve media agency to check the responsiveness and gather qualitative engagement factors to an advertising which are usually shown in between those popular shows but it is sure the engagement quantifies the degree to which the creative content is served.
Where is Prison Break??? It should be the first I guess….
I can’t believe Lost is not on the list and Heroes is not higher on the list for Top Ten TV Shows On Social Network. I realize the premiere may have been delayed but how many sites and forums are dedicated to unraveling the mystery of Lost? Valuable data but it would appear to be flawed.
We have no indication of the time period of these metrics. Lost isn’t showing at the moment, so if it was taken just recently, it won’t be there. It doesn’t help that it’s lost (heh) a lot of its following, it hasn’t lived up to its first season. Same goes for Prison Break. It started to drag, and I’m not surprised people aren’t caring about it as much these days (despite this, I still watch them both)
Whoops, we do have an indication of the time period – it’s for a week in September. That’s why Lost isn’t on the list.
It’s hard to say how accurate these figures really are, because for many shows there’s multiple websites, forums and even newsgroups. Are they even measuring newsgroups? I know there’s a fairly active newsgroup for NCIS. But a popular show like Heroes is likely to have many forums appearing about it and much of the activity may not appear in the sample.
And then there’s the age of the show to consider. Older shows attract new followers over time. And when it comes to something like football, people could be talking about it but not necissarily mention the show.
It would be interesting to see how the top 20 compares and how the top 10 appear amongst the top 20 in each category. I know NCIS gets high ratings even though it didn’t appear amongst the top 10.
I can see why no one talks about Gray’s Anatomy, because it is just a fluffy show that goes in one ear and out the other.
I think that the viewers/engagers of the non-Neilsen shows on the second list are simply more prone to using the tools of the Internet. I’m willing to bet those viewers are young and/or more tech-savvy/engaged in general.
Criminal Minds: Wil Wheaton was on this show recently and has been blogging about it. Dude is well read and probably shot that number up quite a bit.
I don’t think the Nielsens have been reporting truly representative ratings for quite a long time now.
I think this list just means that the viewers of 2 and a 1/2 men, criminal minds and house are more net savvy.
It doesn’t matter though.. everyone knows the best show is House, M.D.
It’s great that Networked Insights is attempting to gather information that supports more evidence-based marketing. But I suppose the question from marketers is “All this online activity is evidence of *what*, exactly?”
I think it’s tempting to dismiss the viewers of popular shows as older and not tech savvy.
But Hoodlum Entertainment’s Emmerdale campaign for ITV is a case in point. In 06 they created an online storydriven experience which engaged users in the subplot mystery of “who killed Tom King” through narrative driven games and additional content. It generated loads of interaction and involvement from viewers – this was for a soapie watched by millions of UK female grocery buyers. Not techno savvy young men tapping away in their bedrooms late at night.