IBC '17: Kantar Offers Facebook Video Metrics
If Facebook is to become a primary destination for broadcaster content and advertising dollars it needs to expose more of its metrics—and with Kantar Media it is doing just that.
The WPP-owned measurement agency has now added Facebook data to the data it already gathers from Twitter.
"Now we have ability to access interactions made on Facebook by any single user," said Carlos Sanchez, global director social media for Kantar Media at IBC. "We have the ability to understand how people are engaging with TV programmes on social media and to compare Facebook with Twitter."
Comparative measurements have been taking place in the UK for a while. "What we have seen is that most top-rated TV programmes in the UK rank the same on Twitter as on Facebook," he said. "We see consistency of engagement in TV across the two platforms overall."
There are differences, though. Kantar says it's able to show that engagement on each platform is programme or genre dependent. Game of Thrones has a deeper engagement with viewers on Facebook, whereas Celebrity Big Brother exhibits more social activity on Twitter than on Facebook.
"Twitter has a positive causal relationship between tweets and TV ratings," said Sanchez. "An average of 2% uplift in TV ratings is caused by tweets as an increasing number of people watch TV and post."
He said that this new layer of audience data to measure programme performance will prove useful to broadcasters and advertisers. "It's a new way to understand the relationship between audiences and content which could be useful for advertisers in the planning stage. It can help content creators understand more about character and storylines."
He said some of WPP's media agency clients are already using Kantar's data complemented with TV ratings for planning.
However, Andy Taylor, co-founder and CEO, Little Dot Studios had a slightly differing view. His company produces original and brand funded content distributed across social networks including Facebook and YouTube.
"If you want to monetize content then Facebook and YouTube are the worst place to do it, said Taylor. "If you start from the premise of building awareness and presence and think of this as monetizable marketing to build scale then they totally work.
He added, "I don't think anybody should try and start a new YouTube channel with pure original content and expect to make money," he added. "But building a brand and engaging audiences with a view to exploiting them elsewhere is ideal for these platforms."
He suggested that viewing video on Facebook fades sharply after 24 hours, whereas YouTube had a far longer shelf life.
"That may change with Facebook Watch, because it's a new destination for the platform that people can browse and view longform content," he said. "What is happening is that video views are being driven by mobile yet we're also starting to see these platforms (Facebook Watch, YouTube Red, Netflix) move into the living room.
Daniel Danker, Facebook's product director, reiterated Facebook's goal with Watch, which is "to build a platform where publishers and advertisers can thrive. In addition to that, we increasingly see they want to build an audience and retain a community – globally – for content between episodes.
"The people element becomes inextricable from content."
Related Articles
The social network pitches its new video service as the community-based OTT platform broadcasters have been waiting for.
14 Sep 2017
How are organizations such as PBS and TechCrunch using Facebook Live to reach and grow their audiences? The platform has been with us for a year now, so it's time to check in.
01 Jun 2017