Tag Archives: olympics

Twitter knows more about what drives viewer behavior than NBC

In my last post, I argued there’s more value in social media as its own content channel than in its ability to drive ratings or sales. The prime mover of that post was a quote in the Financial Times from NBCUniversal’s head of research Alan Wurtzel who said social media “’is not a game changer yet’ in influencing television viewing.” He also said “the emperor wears no clothes” which tells you just how much marketing people love a good cliche.

After taking another look at the articles written in the wake of his comments, it’s unclear how Wurtzel came to these conclusion but more on that in a bit.

If you’re going to draw conclusions about cause and effect, it helps to base them on the results of an actual study.

Here’s the latest: On Thursday, Twitter’s head of research Anjali Midha released a second batch of results from a study of 12,000 Twitter users that examined the effects of tweets on consumer action. Her first post focused on the relationship between the kinds of tweets consumers saw from/about brands and the type of action they took afterwards. It’s definitely worth a read.

Specific to this discussion is Midha’s second post which deals with the effects of TV-related tweets. In my post, I argued Twitter can be a complementary content channel all its own, but if you’re going to look to it as a call to action, it’s important to consider whether it affects awareness, consideration and brand education and not just ratings or sales.

It turns out tweets can do all of that:

Continue reading Twitter knows more about what drives viewer behavior than NBC

Stop thinking of social media only as a ratings or sales driver

An article in the Financial Times seems to speak in no uncertain terms about social media’s inability to generate ratings for television shows, despite both Twitter and Facebook fighting for the right to claim each does it better:

The two social networks have spent the past year trumpeting a virtuous cycle between people watching television and using social media. But, in spite of the buzz, NBCUniversal’s head of research Alan Wurtzel says that social media “is not a game changer yet” in influencing television viewing.

Peter Kafka at Re/Code puts an even finer point on Wurtzel’s views:

He comes to that conclusion after looking at the effect of Twitter, as well as Facebook, on NBCU’s ratings during the Winter Olympics. Wurtzel saw lots of chatter about Sochi on social media, but none of that seemed to translate to increased viewership.

There are a number of reasons why using the Olympics as a yardstick isn’t the best idea. Again, from the Financial Times piece:

Ad executives cautioned that the results could be skewed by the fact that the Olympics draws mass audiences who are likely to tune in regardless of social media buzz.

More niche programming, such as dramas or reality television programmes, could show more correlations between social media activity and viewership, says Kate Sirkin, global research director at Publicis’ Starcom MediaVest Group, which last year committed to hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising spend on Twitter over several years.

Other questions I had that I’d research if I had more time:

  • What are the typical demographics of the Olympics and how do they compare to the average user of Twitter and Facebook?
  • Did NBC utilize its social media channels to encourage viewers to tune in for its broadcasts? Was there a specific call to action? Were they conversational? Or did the tweets read more like a print ad?
  • How many “luge” jokes were made on Twitter during the Olympics? (This is less about the topic at-hand and more because I have the sense of humor of a child.)

Wurtzel’s is a voice worth listening to as he’s had a long career in television with many years in research. And he’s not exactly been against new media as a way to drive eyeballs to traditional TV, specifically for the Olympics:

But Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development for NBCU, said in separate remarks that new media seemed to have the opposite effect: The more live video people saw of the games taking place in real-time, the more interested they were in seeing curated primetime telecasts that included more information about the athletes, their background and the stories behind their journey to the event.

Still, as Re/Code and Financial Times both point out, there are plenty of studies that suggest a correlation between ratings and social media chatter. And yesterday Twitter CEO Dick Costolo had a specific response to Wurtzel’s position.

But mostly I’m stunned we’re still thinking of social media purely in terms of eyeballs and sales. Especially since not all marketing tactics/channels are expected to have a direct relationship to them. NBC/Wurtzel certainly seems to view social media as such without considering things like awareness, consideration, brand education, etc.

Continue reading Stop thinking of social media only as a ratings or sales driver

Why #NBCFail matters beyond the Olympics

Listen to me discuss NBC’s Olympics coverage and other news of the week on WBEZ’s “848” program here.

While most consumers have been perfectly happy with NBC’s Olympics coverage on prime time cable, broadcast TV and online via livestreams and apps, a largely social-media powered stream of objections has converged around the #NBCFail hashtag. There are as many complaints as there are Olympics sports but the biggest objections related to NBC’s tape-delayed coverage and its shutdown of Independent correspondent Guy Adams’s Twitter account. While Simon Dumenco of Ad Age and Megan Garber of The Atlantic have great takedowns of some of the other arguments, there are a few points in this kerfuffle that bear some discussion. These are a few that occurred to me. Fair warning: There’s been so much discussion of this, I’m skipping over some of the bedrock arguments and backstory to get to some of the “where do we go from here” ideas. This is a bit rough and open-ended so bear that in mind.

1. If it’s “just sports” then it can be “just _____.”

One comment I’ve heard often in this conversation is #NBCFail is mostly a “first-world problem” because the discussion is about the coverage of sports and sports isn’t “real news.” But one person’s distraction is another person’s “real news.” Once we say sports is not worthy of real news coverage it becomes easier to say books, consumer tech, music or movies are mere distractions and not worthy of serious consideration either. And once we say something isn’t deserving of careful consideration it makes it easier for publishers to talk less about how it can be covered well and more about how it should be packaged and sold.

2. Is NBC tarnishing its news brand and ultimately making it less likely to monetize those users?

NBC is leveraging its full news power only when it can do the most good for its business interests, not for its consumers. NBC’s tape delay strategy is moot in years when the Olympics are in the same time zone as the U.S. because NBC carries these events live. So it’s not as if it always chooses to emphasize its news interests over its business interests but in the case of sports, or at least the 2012 Olympics, it chooses the latter.

If you’re to be taken seriously as a news publisher, you have a requirement to publish as complete a news experience as possible at the moment when the information will have the most value to your audience. The consumer is paying you – or subscribing to a platform that includes your content – based on the perceived value of that news as well as for the convenience factor of acquiring it. The friction here seems to be that many people want a la carte coverage they can pay for without having to subscribe to a major cable provider. It will be interesting to see NBC explores the creation of raw news feed channels via something like Roku (as well as online) and provides the packaged version on its other more-established channels. It may find its building an entirely new audience segment. Perhaps it doesn’t make sense economically, but might in years (months?) to come. But NBC seems to be losing the opportunity to build this audience in its owned channels and finds some of that digital audience doing elsewhere (see #4 below).

3. What gets treated as the news and what gets treated as entertainment?

NBC doesn’t seem to think providing the big screen/HD TV experience several hours later is a problem. That seems less like a strategy you employ for news and more like one you employ for entertainment. If it’s entertainment, it generally doesn’t matter when it’s broadcast or consumed. But news certainly has a time-sensitive component to it (the dismissive phrase “That’s old news” comes to mind here). The weight of that news is relative to the timing of it.

What stops a publisher from waiting to tell you about news until it can maximize the profit in the telling of it? If you have a big scoop and can figure out how to package it as a multi-day event, why not wait until you have an advertiser to run ads around that coverage before releasing it? There’s an argument to be made that NBC is doing exactly that but I’d hate to see what the end result of that strategy means for news consumers.

4. News coverage is mostly determined by who controls and publishes on the platform

For years now, users have been determining what news is and how it is published, largely through Web and social media channels. It’s no longer the sole province of large print and TV publishers.The conversation sparked by the #NBCFail hashtag has made this more obvious than ever but also showed just how much control big news organizations that A) partner with or B) own the platforms have over the platforms with the biggest reach.

Many people will bootleg news content (like providing an overseas livestream of the Olympics opening ceremonies) not because they want to hijack a revenue stream for themselves but just because they don’t like the idea of a closed system. With a platform like Twitter, it’s easier than ever to find raw feeds which satisfy those whose desire for news of an event outweighs the number of easily-available news sources. (I didn’t have to seek out a livestream of the opening ceremonies; I saw a link for it on Twitter from people I already follow.)

Barriers or inconveniences to the consumption of news (like having to download special equipment, make changes to obscure computer settings or watch a poor quality, buffering livestream) will start to seem like less of an issue to consumers as the real-time value of a news event increases. For me, the value of watching the opening ceremonies live seemed greater because people I followed on Twitter were discussing it. Unfortunately for publishers, the real-time news value is different for each person so it’s tough to know what publishing streams are monetizable and which ones aren’t without either experimentation or waiting to see how users themselves innovate.

As for the Guy Adams temporary Twitter account shutdown, Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic has a good summary.

NBC may not have known this tweet existed were it not for someone at Twitter who notified NBC of both the tweet and a remedy. Whether the information is public or private is debatable but NBC’s proximity to power, due to its (non-monetary) Twitter partnership, allowed it to get the account suspended without a thorough consideration of this point. Twitter acknowledged it should not have done this, but with the service already looking for more ways to monetize its product for publishers it’s clear they’re interested in hyper-serving this particular user base.

Let’s say an upstart publisher decides to start covering the heck out of the Olympics. Maybe it’s a traditional television channel, maybe it’s Web-only. Perhaps they find a way to provide a broadcast-quality stream of the BBC through fair use. Or they find a way to leverage content from athletes’ personal social media accounts to provide unique value. What’s to stop NBC – which is owned by Comcast – from shutting down that publisher on its Web and cable television systems? Nothing. Or what if NBC develops a “strategic partnership” with iTunes and asks Apple to remove another news publisher’s app because it feels that app infringes on its exclusivity agreement with the Olympics?

As with most issues surrounding social media and news distribution, the best practices in these scenarios are still being sorted out.