Forbes recently published a list of “3 metrics that really matter [to a] startup.” Topping that list at number one is measuring how engaged users are, since users who sign up for a service but rarely use it have little value and users who constantly use the service are of great value. Similarly, Argus recently concluded that GetGlue, the social networking site for television viewers, is a better metric for measuring the relationship between social media buzz and viewership than was overall buzz data about TV shows. Argus Insights has concluded that there is a relationship between buzz on Twitter and weekly television viewership.
Two of the most popular shows on television are The Walking Dead and The Vampire Diaries. The Walking Dead is based on a comic book series and is a horror, post-apocalyptic drama and The Vampire Diaries is based on a book series and is a supernatural drama. Given each show’s fan base, Argus set out to investigate if there was a correlation between social media buzz on Twitter and viewership throughout the shows’ seasons. Although there are very few studies—including Nielsen Holding’s most recent study that relates buzz to TV ratings—about the influence of social media on television, Argus began researching viewership per episode and the buzz per day for the duration of the two television seasons. Each television series had two sets of data: viewership in millions and Twitter social media buzz in thousands. Figure 1 and Figure 2 are graphical representations of these relationships.
Figure 1. The R2 is .026, meaning there was very little correlation between viewership and social media buzz on Twitter.
Figure 2. The R2 is .2067, meaning there is a correlation between Vampire Diaries viewership and social media buzz on Twitter.
The shows experienced rises and falls of social media buzz and viewership that corresponded to weekly airings. Season premieres and finales attracted more buzz than the regular season, though the buzz generated by the finale of The Vampire Diaries paled in comparison to The Walking Dead finale. The noticeable higher levels of buzz at the beginning and ending of the season drove the creation of additional test cases as we set up the hypothesis for analysis. Argus evaluated two specific cases:
3 Day Buzz: By focusing on buzz from three specific days (the day before, the day of, and the day after an airing), Argus had the opportunity to concentrate on buzz most likely associated with the actual broadcast of the episode. Buzz for those three days was totaled for a “3 Day Buzz” value (See Table 1).
4 Day Buzz: Argus shifted focus to buzz from the week prior to an airing in order to assess if buzz four days before a broadcast impacted whether more people watched the next broadcast. Buzz from an actual broadcast and four days prior to the airing were totaled to attain a value for “4 Day Buzz” (See Table 2).
Table 1. Mentions of Walking Dead taken from zombie stream limited to unique users
Case
R2 w/ premiere-finale
R2 w/o premiere-finale
General
.026
N/A
3Day Buzz
.0624
.0748
4 Day Buzz
.106
.113
Table 2. Mentions of Vampire Diaries taken from vampire stream limited to unique users
Case
R2 w/ premiere-finale
R2 w/o premiere-finale
General
.2067
N/A
3 Day Buzz
.222
.334
4 Day Buzz
.247
.276
Season premieres and finales are unique cases because they demonstrate predictably high levels of viewership and buzz. Therefore, it is important to analyze data with and without the premieres and finales. Interestingly, R2 increased after premiere and finale were removed from the data being observed. This increase is significant because it implies that the data without premiere and finale is more accurate of the fluctuations in viewers. Loyal fans are more likely to watch a series on a weekly basis than fans that are only likely to watch premieres or finales because of hype. Information about The Walking Dead indicates that while there are millions of viewers, only a fraction of those viewers use Twitter as a way to engage with the show and other fans. On the contrary, Vampire Diaries fans are more likely to use Twitter to engage with the show and other fans (see Table 2).
GetGlue is a social networking site for television fans. The application allows viewers to “check-in” while they watch live television in exchange for gaining access to exclusive stickers of that particular show. Argus obtained data about buzz that GetGlue was generating with regards to The Walking Dead and The Vampire Diaries and applied the “3 Day Buzz” and “4 Day Buzz” cases to the data with the purpose of further exploring the explanatory relationship between buzz and viewership (see Table 3 and Table 4).
Table 3. Mentions of GetGlue and Walking Dead limited to unique users
Case
R2 w/ premiere-finale
R2 w/o premiere-finale
3 Day Buzz
.189
.493
4 Day Buzz
.102
.400
Table 4. Mentions of GetGlue and Vampire Diaries limited to unique users
Case
R2 w/ premiere-finale
R2 w/o premiere-finale
3 Day Buzz
.430
.358
4 Day Buzz
.361
.277
While evaluating a show without a premiere and finale was necessary to attain an accurate portrayal of viewers, GetGlue R2 results present a different conclusion. While the R2 values for The Walking Dead follow previous trends, The Vampire Diaries R2 decrease. This outcome could be attributed to viewership demographics. Vampire Diaries viewers consist of more women who are into social viewing—which includes dual-screen viewing and using Twitter to engage with the series—that are more likely to use Getglue. Walking Dead viewers, on the other hand, consist of fewer women, are not into social viewing, and are therefore less likely to engage with GetGlue.
In conclusion, Argus found that there is a relationship between social media buzz and viewership, although it is not very robust. The lack of strong correlation can be attributed to several different factors, including demographics. Given the different themes and nature of the shows, more men watch The Walking Dead, while more women watch The Vampire Diaries (see Figure 3).
As previously mentioned, Nielsen Holding undertook a similar study. The market analysis and measurement service focused on the relationship between social media buzz and television ratings (Talbot 2011). While their focus was not viewership as was Argus’s focus, their findings shed light on the importance of social media to TV. Nielsen’s study found that a 9 percent increase in buzz in the weeks before a premiere is indicative of a 1 percent increase in ratings. In the weeks before the mid-season and finale, a 14 percent increase in buzz is indicative of a 1 percent increase in ratings (Talbot 2011). Hence, social media is directly relating to TV ratings, and possibly viewership. Nielsen also reported that television series with the greatest data included series that were watched primarily by women (Talbot 2011). Argus arrived at the same conclusion, as previously described.
Recently, Coca-Cola attempted to relate buzz with revenue gain. Patrick Coffee from PR News reported that Coca-Cola’s effort to be more active on social media has not translated into “short term revenue gains” (Coffee 2013). Coca-Cola defined buzz as “conversations taking place on social networks…[measured] by ‘counting the raw publicly available comments,’” an interesting definition to consider because they used data from sites like Facebook and Youtube while Argus only used Twitter. Coffee reports that Coca-Cola’s 60 million fans on Facebook were not enough to drive sales up. While generic buzz around The Walking Dead or The Vampire Diaries seemed to have little correlation to viewership, equivalent to Coca-Cola losing sales while having 60 million likes on Facebook, the specific type of buzz generated by GetGlue correlates much better to viewership. This demonstrates the importance of picking the right buzz metrics for analysis and ensuring your business is not pushing the wrong metric of success.
The same Coffee article reported that a poll on the Yahoo! Finance page corroborated Coca-Cola’s findings with public opinion. Users were asked if they believe “social media (Facebook, Twitter etc) [influences] what [they] buy,” to which 85% of voters, out of 500,000 responses, clicked never. While our conclusions and pubic opinion are contradictory, it will be of importance to industries around the world to re-evaluate their metrics if public opinion is indeed correct.
Based on the research of Lindsay Nichols and Griselda Arzate Sources Cited: http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/coca-cola-says-social-media-buzz-does-not-boost-sales_b60389 http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425675/social-media-buzz-and-tv-ratings/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2013/04/18/3-metrics-that-really-matter-for-your-start-up/
As Samsung reports their quarterly report with a mix of excitement and caution (Samsung Boosts Capital Spending as High-End Phone Demand Slows – Bloomberg), Argus Insights sees their caution warranted for Q3. July brought the first significant drop in consumer buzz for Samsung Smartphone in a long time. What made the drop even more poignant was that Apple saw a boost in demand. This drop in buzz was coupled with a drop in delight meaning that consumers expectations for what a Samsung Smartphone brings to their lives are not being met.
The weakness of the S4 coupled with the desire to phase out the S3, compounded by the confusing launch of four separate Galaxy Note 3 handsets this fall portends a challenging 2013 for Samsung. The market leader has to lead the market in more than just sales and invention of technology driven features, it has to lead with value and innovation to the end user.
We recently did some analysis for the Embedded Vision Alliance looking at consumer adoption vision technologies in consumer electronics. If you’re curious, you can see the slides here. The shocking result was how little of the Galaxy S4 customers even mention the eye-tracking features. The graph below shows the volume of eye-tracking mentions compared to the overall mentions. Previously we’ve commented on the S4’s poor launch into the market but this may shed some light as to why that’s was the case.
Samsung’s biggest push in the marketing was the ability of the Galaxy S4 to do cool things by tracking your eyes. It was featured in all their commercials and was the backbone of their “next big thing is already here” campaign refresh. Turns out it wasn’t that important to consumers. Less than 5% even mentioned what Samsung considered to be the most important feature of the Galaxy. Let’s put a fine point on that. Samsung spent millions of dollars telling the world about these vision based interface features and it only resonated enough with 5% of their customers to even mention it?
Here’s the kicker, of that 5%, over 60% did not like the feature. They found it “twitchy” or “erratic”. One particularly passionate consumer even called it “fake.” The other theme that arose from the naysayers was the impact these features had on battery life, causing their S4 to lose joules faster than Coca Cola’s share price evaporating.
To be fair, those that loved these features, really loved them and found Samsung’s brand promise of a “Life Companion” rings true. But that was for just 2% of all consumers that bothered to review the product.
This could be the reason the S4 was slow the launch. The features that Samsung pushed in an effort to drive demand literally no one wanted. When you strip the vision features from the S4, it looks a lot like the S3 (which is still doing brisk sales by the way). Like selling solar powered heaters in the Sahara, Samsung staked their flagship launch on what the market did not want. Pushing features over experience will do that to you. While the Galaxy S4 seems to be recovering now, its not that more consumers are discussing Smart Pause. Consumers cite the screen size, application responsiveness, anything but the vision based features, as reasons for purchase. LG just released a firmware update to enable the same feature set on the LG Optimus G Pro and so far no one has even mentioned it. The market is not yet ready, partly for performance issues, partly for not finding compelling needs that these features solve for. Maybe the S5…
The street is all a twitter regarding Samsung Galaxy S4 sales estimate: 30% below expectations | BGR. We called this weeks ago with our coverage of the S4 launch. Turns out our analysis was spot on, that the S4 wasn’t having the same demand as the hype would suggest. This points out the fallacy of most forecasting methods based on sell-in rather than consumer demand metrics similar what we have developed at Argus Insights. Our analysis shows consumer dissent around a laggy performance and battery challenges with both life and charging. All the “features” added in the Galaxy S4 have clogged the experience for consumers and provide evidence that Samsung is still learning how to provide an integrated user experience rather a series of features chained together by marketing ads.
Argus Insights CEO recently had a conversation with RCR Wireless’s Martha DeGrasse around the key findings in the latest weekly Smartphone Demand report. Top of mind was the comeback of the Galaxy S IV thanks to Verizon and the surprise that the Blackberry Z10 continues to demand attention. The report will be released later this week. Sign up for a subscription here.