ListenLogic EVP Kevin Glacken was recently featured in Smart Data Collective with a guest column entitled ‘Big Social Data Can Unlock the Power of Engaged Viewers’ which reviews how the intersection of television and social media is creating multidimensional value for programs.

We sat down with Kevin to understand more about how advanced social intelligence is impacting the entertainment industry by revealing the power of engaged viewers.

Q: You talk about the value of ‘engaged viewers,’ how do these viewers help save shows that networks would traditionally cut?

A: The sheer number of viewers a show has will always be a measurement of programming value because it conveys good old fashioned reach. However today, with open social media that allows audience members to interact and promote programs, there’s an important quality component aside from the traditional quantity component to measure the value of programming.

Up until even recently shows were getting canceled because of their relative small audience sizes. A few years ago a show like Jericho, which struggled to surpass three million viewers ended up getting slashed. Today, that dynamic has changed and a show such as Community, which draws about the same audience size, gets a longer run simply because the viewers are engaged, giving the show a Top 15 Involved Viewer Rating (IVR). They are discussing and promoting the show, but more importantly revealing a wealth of insight on themselves that delivers incredible value to advertisers – their likes, dislikes, interests, tastes, behaviors. This understanding provides an entirely new dimension of value, which extends the show’s life.

The IVR can actually predict a shows success in many cases better than the traditional Nielson ratings, simply because of the depth of insight, volume of audience and span across demographics that our platform measures. With traditional audience rankings shows like Glee, Sons of Anarchy or The Daily Show would likely not make beyond a season or two. Yet, the social intelligence derived from the “cult” audience delivers incredible value to advertisers.

Q: Do you see entertainment relying more heavily on the engaged viewer to measure a show’s value?

A: There is certainly a segment of the industry embracing this given the clients we deliver solutions for across media, sports and entertainment. Not every media outlet is adopting this approach yet, but the ones that are able to leverage audience insights with IVR to not only drive advertising dollars, but also shape the show’s storyline are delivering powerful, engaging programming. The ability to gain actionable, multidimensional insight on a program is impressive.

ListenLogic CMO, Mark Harrington, was recently in Social Media Today with a feature piece titled ‘Surpassing Surveys with Social Insight’ where he reviews the widespread bias issues with traditional surveying and explains how unsolicited, unbiased insight from millions of consumers is changing the strategic decision-making process across a variety of industries.

Here the veteran marketer expounds on traditional surveying versus social insight and the growing strategic impact advanced social intelligence is having on businesses today.

Q: What is the biggest issue surveying poses to corporations?

A: “It’s all about bias flawing your results, giving you the wrong answers and ultimately leading you in the wrong direction. That is incredibly dangerous for those in Marketing, Product Management and Development, Brand and Innovation. The main issue is that because you’re essentially manufacturing the research there is bias in the approach, technique, results and measurement. That is difficult to overcome and can be incredibly costly.”

Observation is an incredibly powerful tool, and doing so across millions and millions of individuals gives businesses deep understanding into the needs, issues, likes, dislikes, gaps and concerns within a market. Businesses need streaming big data processing at a level to handle the hundreds of millions of relevant daily consumer comments across online channels and social networks. Now that this technology is accessible, the ability to gain a true understanding of prospects, consumers and competitors on multidimensional levels is possible and powerful to companies that leverage it.

Q: How challenging is it for a business to leverage social insight?

A: “The biggest challenge is typically one of understanding that the technology advancements that are available today. There is so many wishes regarding big data. What ListenLogic has built is an ability to process over one billion data operations per second. That is hard to wrap your head around, but it allows tremendous amounts of incredibly complex questions to be asked against the massive flow of social data to get highly-specific answers.

“Social listening has traditionally been about “buzz,” or high-level sentiment, which is often not actionable or even accurate. Companies are realizing that technology advancements now deliver deeper understanding of valuable, sophisticated concepts the path to product purchase, unmet market needs, consumer personas and strong and weak points of your competition. This is a major competitive advantage to the companies leveraging it. Personally, I wish this had been possible when I was with Citi and eBay. We constantly dealt with the bias issues of surveys and focus groups in both organizations.”

Q: What does social insight ultimately provide to a business?

A: “On the most basic level, social insight provides a business with market truths. Bias is absent due to the nature of consumer social commentary – it’s unsolicited, genuine and direct from the consumer with no prompts or questions. This is a relatively new frontier for corporations.

“Many businesses are still trying to figure out how to simply use social networks effectively with most focused on broadcasting and maybe basic inquiry response, so truly “listening” these networks of consumers for deeper understanding is a new concept. There are many companies that ListenLogic is partnered with that are gaining unprecedented understanding of their prospects, consumers, products and even competitors. This facilitates understanding of not just how consumers feel, but how and why they make decisions and take actions related to your markets and products. It’s actionable insight that can revolutionize an organization’s strategy.”

-LL-

THE VERDICT IS IN.  According to ListenLogic’s Voice of the Consumer Report, Audi was the talk of social media during Super Bowl XLIV:

FINDINGS:

Audi was the most talked about and Dodge had the most positive sentiment.

Methodology:

ListenLogic used its proprietary social media listening platform and analytic methodology to tap into the conversations relating to Super Bowl XLIV automotive ads across message boards, forums, microblogs, blogs, news and social-networking sites.

The first step in this study was to gather a clear signal of the Super Bowl viewer and remove irrelevant noise. Our analysts used a combination of automated and manual techniques to identify accurate mentions, removing commercial editorial from the data.