Social Media, Television, and the Evolution of the “Institutionally Effective” Audience

I recently had the honor of being invited to present some of my current research to the faculty and students of MIT’s program in Comparative Media Studies.  I presented some preliminary findings from my ongoing research into how various social media analytics are being utilized in the buying and selling of television audiences.  It’s a topic I’ve touched on quite a bit here, but this invitation forced me to start organizing some more coherent thoughts about the subject, and to place this ongoing process into historical perspective.

On the Ongoing Evolution of Online Audience Measurement

It’s sometimes easy to forget that how new, relatively speaking, the Internet is as an advertising medium.  But the still-unsettled state of online audience measurement provides us with a strong reminder.  This is well reflected in the 9-month old Making Measurement Make Sense initiative, a collaborative effort of key industry groups such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the Association of National Advertisers, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

Latest Developments in the Evolution of the C3

The adoption in 2007 of the C3 commercial rating as the standard currency in the purchasing of national television audiences is perhaps one of the most profound changes to affect the economics of television in the past 20-30 years.  However, as recent developments indicate, this change is not yet complete.

Some Initial Thoughts on Next-Generation Ratings Analysis

Traditionally, when we’ve talked about audience ratings, we’ve talked about the kind of data on audience size and demographics reflected in the exposure-focused measurement services provided by firms such as Nielsen and Arbitron.  As I’ve been discussing quite a bit in this blog, a growing number of alternative approaches to audience value are emerging that are much less concerned with audience size and demos.  Here, for instance, is a recent and informative discussion with an analyst at General Sentiment about their two measures of audience value, the Involvement Index and the Emotional Bonding Q.  Assuming that one or more of these emerging measures takes hold in the audience marketplace, the next step for those of us who do academic audience research is to begin building a body of predictive theory and research along the lines of what has developed in what we’ll call traditional ratings analysis.

On the Sluggish Evolution of the Streaming Audio Audience

A few weeks back I posted a piece about how audience measurement issues were affecting the development of the TV Everywhere initiative  being rolled out by the cable industry.  As this piece indicates, similar issues are affecting online music streaming services such as Pandora.

The Latest on the Evolution of Local TV Ratings

It’s easy to forget that, these days, local television and national television operate on completely different currencies.  The C3 currency (commercial viewing within 3 days of original broadcast) that is the standard for national television buys has yet to filter down to the 210 local television markets in the U.S.  And according to this report, it’s not something that’s going to change any time soon

The Role of Audience Measurement in the Evolution of TV Everywhere

One of the points I emphasize in both Audience Evolution and its precursor, Audience Economics, is that history has shown that the key to a new media technology or platform gaining a foothold as an economically viable advertising medium is the establishment of an audience measurement system that is widely perceived as reasonably accurate and reliable.  This point comes to the forefront once again in the context of the current state of affairs for the cable industry’s TV Everywhere initiative.