Twitter has said the Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings (NTTR) metric will ‘complement’ the existing OzTam ratings system and help networks highlight how engaged their viewers are.
Tony Broderick, head of TV Partnerships at Twitter Australia, said TV ratings have been based on eyeballs alone with “an assumption” that the viewers are engaged “as long as the TV is on”.
“In an Australian first, Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings (NTTR) will provide partners the opportunity to truly measure the engagement around shows by measuring total activity (Tweets, unique authors) and reach (impressions, unique audience) of TV-related conversation on Twitter.”
The blog post comes after Nielsen announced in March that it was bringing the metric to Australia. NTTR is expected to be available in the second half of 2014.
Broderick said there has never been a better time to bring the metric to Australia and pointed to Neilsen figures which show 45% of Australian Twitter users engage with the social network while watching TV.
“This fast-growing behaviour is great news for networks and advertisers. Why? Because in markets where the NTTR is already live — such as the US — research finds that viewers who tweet-along to television are more attractive to advertisers than their TV-only counterparts,” Broderick added.
People who engage with Twitter while watching TV are less likely to tune off during the ad breaks with only 8% doing so compared to 17% of TV-only viewers, Symphony Advanced Media found.
Those who use Twitter while consuming TV are also more likely to recall ads, 50% compared to 40% and have almost double the purchase intent (30% vs 16%).
To read more of Twitter’s post click here.
