Nielsen is to launch Twitter TV ratings in Australia in the second half of this year, a move that has been welcomed by Nine and GroupM agency MEC.
The media research and ratings organisation flagged that the social metric would soon arrive in Australia back in October.
At the time, Mindshare chief digital officer Ciaran Norris told AdNews it was an interesting and welcome move.
Today, James Hier chief strategy officer at fellow GroupM agency MEC, said the move was "progressive".
“Social TV has transformed TV’s image from a lean back, relaxed media platform, to a real-time engagement environment. What the industry has lacked is a recognised currency and tool to take advantage of this phenomenon at scale," he said. "Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings will act as a hotspot for audience energy, not just numbers, allowing marketers and agencies to approach how they evaluate and use programs in a more progressive way.”
WPP last year struck a $100m deal with Twitter with Norris at the time signalling the lay of the land. [It will likely allow agencies] to target people based on the TV shows they are watching".
Twitter chief scientist Deb Roy argued in June last year that Twitter was "the soundtrack to TV" and that measuring the spread of tweets during shows could provide new opportunities for advertisers and a new audience metric for TV networks.
Of the planned launch locally, Nine Network research director Steve Weaver said an “accurate social media metric will empower networks, agencies, and advertisers to make data-driven decisions around content, programming and advertising, based on the true influence of the online conversation. We will no doubt see more products in this space, but Nielsen and Twitter are definitely ahead of the curve.”
Nielsen and Twitter struck a deal in late 2012. The product that arrives later this year in Australia will be a separate to OzTAM and Regional TAM ratings, which remain the television audience measurement currencies.
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