One way Twitter seems to be like television is that the bulk of tweets about TV shows are seen when a show is live.
A study found that on average 57% of the weekly impressions of tweets about TV shows are related to live airings of that show, according to Nielsen, which says it now measures Twitter TV activity.
The percentage varies somewhat by genre. For reality shows, live impressions are 67% of the total and for drama, they are 58%. With comedies, live impressions are only 49% of the weekly total.
People who tweet about shows do it more often when shows are airing live.
But those results leave a significant amount of people tweeting when shows are not live.
Nielsen said that on days when programs are not airing live, just 33% of TV-related tweets are sent in response to program content. During live airings 65% of tweets are about program content. The remaining share of program-related tweets tends to reference a program’s brand or express excitement ahead of upcoming episodes.
“Live Twitter activity serves as a measure of content response and general audience engagement. By contrast, when programs are not airing live, program buzz becomes a signal of program awareness on social media and can be used to evaluate how effectively promotions are generating buzz,” Nielsen said in a blog post.
“As networks look to drive engagement and viewership through promotional strategies on Twitter, they can reach unique segments of program authors based on when and how each group Tweets about programming,” Nielsen said.
