Want to start winning with social media? Start listening. When I say listening I don’t mean reading the posts on your Facebook wall. I mean start monitoring and measuring the social web to see what people are saying about your TV show, advertising, brand, or products. Today, top companies are using social media for more than broadcasting brand messages. They’re beginning to incorporate the predictive capabilities inherent to “big data” by putting the voice of the consumer as expressed in social data, at the center of their decision making. Why? Social data allows marketing professionals to collect real-time intelligence on their audience – be that viewers or consumers – and make less data-free decisions.

Social Data Makes Media Buying Decisions a No Brainer
The power of social data as applied to marketing decisions is perhaps most impressive in the areas of media planning and buying. During the advertising sales season known as the Upfronts, Networked Insights advises broadcasters, brands, and media agencies on how to best align audiences and media. We explore this in greater detail in the eBook: New Audience Insights from SocialTV.

Conversations viewers are having across the social web about TV shows, advertising, brands, and products can be segmented and mined to uncover some remarkable insights. For networks that are announcing new television shows and securing advertisers we help:

• Identify brand affinity by TV Show
• Uncover hidden audience segments
• Isolate risky advertising decisions before brands buy
•  Understand program rankings and maximize the value of all dayparts

Media fragmentation and targeting technologies are changing how companies are growing audiences. Creating scalable hyper-segmented strategies is becoming increasingly challenging if you’re not tapped into real-time data. The good news is analytic tools are catching up to meet the demands of consumers and brands in today’s demand economy. SocialSense is Networked Insights analytic platform that allows companies to stay in-sync with their audiences through a dashboard view of the real-time data that matters most.

Read more in the eBook: New Audience Insights from SocialTV to see just how Networked Insights works to make broadcasters more efficient and brands more effective with their advertising investments.

It’s with great pride that we announce Networked Insights has been recognized as having an “unrivaled advantage for socially informed media planning and buying.” in Forrester Research’s “The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012.” Furthermore, we’re humbled that our SocialSense product and related value added services have been recognized as a “Strong Performer” by Forrester.

Listening platforms continue to evolve from volume centric tools to multi-dimensional dashboards that influence major marketing and business results. Today’s report marks Forrester’s fourth Wave evaluation in the listening platform landscape. Forrester notes in its report that “listening platforms are part of the way through their evolution – and are currently at a point between the social media monitoring tools they started as and the critical enterprise business analytics tools they must become.”

Networked Insights’ focus is around extracting business insights from social data – with a specialization in informing media planning. Our SocialSense platform directs all aspects of the media buying and planning process, including campaign development, TV buying and selling, digital and search buying, message and creative development, product and brand development post-buy analysis, social media engagement, and campaign attribution and ROI.

Networked Insights’ unique and differential placement within this collection of today’s top nine listening platforms underscores the work of the company and the importance of using social media for real-time decision making in marketing. We believe the demand for data-driven marketing decisions will continue to grow. Companies are no longer looking for just a monitoring platform, they rely on our technology and services to help them successfully navigate the volume of conversations their audience has to make smarter media planning and buying decisions.

Forrester’s latest report evaluated the SocialSense platform, which includes SocialSense Dashboard, SocialSense Analytics and our Sync Suite. We’re thrilled this marketing decision platform is being used by some of today’s top brands and their agencies like Samsung, MTV, Kraft, MillerCoors, Starcom, MediaBrands and more.

See what happens when you embed social data analytics at the center of marketing decisions by watching our recent webinar with Elizabeth Shaw from Forrester Research to learn How to Use Social Data to Make Smarter Media Decisions and to read more about what makes Networked Insights unique download a FREE copy of the 2012 Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms report.

For marketers, developers, designers and entrepreneurs, the annual pilgrimage to Austin, Texas for SXSW Interactive is a highlight in the digital world and this year didn’t disappoint. With surprise visits from Jay-Z, to well hyped app launches and star studded panel conversations, the week amongst the world’s best and brightest was inspiring so I thought I’d share my takeaways for those who didn’t participate.

Marketing Trends

Celebrities draw crowds
In today’s increasingly fragmented media world, with short attention spans and diminishing brand timbre, it’s kind of refreshing to see that some things never change. This was illustrated by the many high profile speakers who were both keynote speakers and panelists.

Launching an app at SXSW is hard
Highlight, a mobile networking app, seemed to grab everyone’s attention well before SXSW even started. It may have fizzled once users experienced the battery drain it caused while running in the background. Win or lose, what’s clear is the competition for new companies is fierce and the breakout apps of years past are proving tough acts to follow.

Seamless integrated brand experiences are critical
With the growth rate of mobile devices and tablets, we’ve entered a time where the consumer’s expectations for consistent experiences with brands and networks are higher than they’ve ever been. Maintaining a constant high quality presence is quickly becoming the standard.

In an always-on world, everything is old news in digital marketing
The thirst for knowledge, answers, tips and insights remains high amongst marketers at SXSW. I often wonder if in today’s hyper connected world, when information finds me at every digital touch point, if one can really learn anything new at a conference. While I still believe you can learn from unique perspectives, what’s clear is the rate at which we consume media and information has changed us and made us smarter. Perhaps it’s time to reevaluate how we interact at these conferences and look for new ways to connect, discover and explore.

Technology Trends

Marketers are talking more than ever
Digital professionals are connecting offline unlike ever before and I believe this is due to the powerful combination of social networking tools, the rate of change/evolution, and the need to stay on top of trends to uncover what’s working and what’s not.

The future is small screen experiences
Next generation products will be mainly on tablets and mobile phones. That’s the world to design apps and technologies for if you’re building tomorrow’s next big thing. For now, marketers are faced with asking themselves how long they can afford to not look at a 360 degree digital experience. The clock is ticking.

Leverage technology to keep today’s real-time consumer at the center
Social media listen, monitoring, and analytics is a game changer for marketers who need to track the pulse of the modern consumer. While a brand’s audience might be armed with social media and mobile devices, today brands are building bridges and accelerating business processes with social data and real-time analytics.

Consumer Trends

Social accelerates pop culture trends
Social media is proving to be an incredible cultural engine driving trends, memes, and messages further and faster than ever imagined. We’re just beginning to see the impact and understand how it happens. We’re establishing new rules and new norms as we adapt to a more connected and digital world.

Engaging more than ever before with TV and brands
Consumers want to talk back. They want to interact. And they want to share. Next generation winners and losers for both brands and networks will be defined not by quality of experience or branding alone, but how well you engage your audience. Making your brand the signal in the noise for consumers is the new mission in media.

Using social media tools to share, broadcast, and curate
Much of what marketers are experimenting with is about enabling advocates to carry your message for you. While lots of lip service is paid to the concept of influencers, the truth is a brand can’t know who and how to spread their marketing most effectively without a lot of cost. It’s cheaper to build an army of fanatics through inspiration, content and platforms that make viral possible.

Event Highlights

HBO’s Girls – Incredible launch and presence with blended offline and online marketing activities. Clearly stood out despite the noise.

American Express – Bold, daring, and dominant marketing. Innovative team that’s pushing technology to redefine the brand and company positioning.

Samsung – Well executed events and marketing campaigns for their target consumer. If your challenge is to take on the coolest brand in the world, these guys are quickly becoming formidable.

Here are the major points included:

• Value gained exploiting shows undervalued by Nielsen
• Hyper-segmentation approaches that go beyond “Adults 18 to 49″
• How smart ad buys and owned content can be leveraged for a bonus of earned social lift
• Successful branded integration ad for the Corolla
• How social can point the way to premium audiences at non-premium prices

If you attended the webinar and would like to revisit it or share it, you can download it here. And if you missed it, all the more reason to download!

The disparity between shows high in viewership and shows high in engagement is reflected in the fact that more than half the shows in the SocialSenseTV Top 20 don’t appear in Nielsen’s top 20. The Hollywood Reporter covered the report and noted how ratings and fan-base don’t always match up. (digiday:DAILY also wrote about the report and our new SocialSenseTV offering.)

So how does this help a media buyer or a network? What can social engagement tell us that matters to the bottom line of those engaged in this spring rite of traditional media?

This is the time of year when networks, agencies, and brands all try to assess what a TV show is worth — and what it’s likely to be worth months later — so they can buy inventory now, at upfront prices. “Scatters,” or ads bought closer to air date, can cost 20 to 30% more than upfront buys. Shrewd, informed buying now saves agencies and brands a lot of money. Bad, misinformed choices will stick them with ads on shows that are dogs.

Social media provides a rich vein of conversation to mine that can measure engagement and passion around a show, an actor, or any other topic you care to explore. We can listen to the social conversation to discover why a show is popular, which shows are a good match for a brand, and ultimately, where to buy or sell TV inventory.

We can even analyze and “rate” shows that haven’t aired yet, by listening in on the early buzz about new shows and their stars.

Advertisers are seeking highly engaged audiences with the idea that they are more likely to watch live, see commercials, and appreciate the connection of brands to their favorite shows. Social media listening provides the perfect platform to find those engaged audiences and then discover what they are talking about.

For networks, the same dynamics are at play. If a network is cultivating shows with highly engaged fans, they’ll want to measure that and capitalize on it. They can use the data to prove value and legitimately increase the cost of TV ads. They can also find good matches between brands and shows by finding those shows with fans that care about a given product or category. Note (in the chart below) how network ranking changes when measured by social media ranking or Nielsen ranking of shows.

In a time when advertisers are worried about viewers skipping over commercials, branded content is a hot topic. We looked at two instances. It’s well known that Subway rescued “Chuck” from cancellation. And the fans seem grateful. They’re still talking about Subway when they talk about the show.

We also looked at the “Modern Family” iPad brand integration episode. Though iPad brought a lot more equity to the partnership (word is Apple didn’t pay cash for the deal, but their buzz is much higher online than that of the show), they did get a substantial lift: $516K in earned media.

These are just examples of the kind of campaign evaluation that social media analytics can provide. It’s a powerful new way to measure the impact of a campaign or tv event, because it aggregates effects from multiple channels: if you saw it live or delayed, on TV or on Hulu, in a bar or on a plane, the buzz registers the same online.

The full report includes more analysis of the uses of social media in informing upfront buying and selling, and more insights around specific shows. Please download it and let us know what you think. And if you are ready to enlist social media in your media buying or selling, check out SocialSenseTV, our new listening platform and custom reports services tailored to television.

We were an ad:tech sponsor. And I presented as part of the Marketing Masters series. We expected about 200—and got 500—at a session  expertly facilitated by Susan Bratton.

It seemed there were a lot of ad network folks at the conference and fewer vendors of, say, online video. But when it comes to figuring out what over 11K people are talking about, it’s best to bring in the listening platform. Our analytics identified these key themes, included here with commentary and sample quotes, ranked in order of prominence:

Parties
The ad:tech crowd is social in every way…

“The entire EWA crew is going there and sponsoring a big party on 4/20, hopefully we can meet some of you guys there. This is my personal favorite conference – you can actually breath at this one and meet people on a more personal level.” (From Warrior Forum.)

Mobile and social media
The increasing proliferation of mobile devices creates a boundless opportunity for marketers. Social media and mobile will develop together. For instance, social dating sites combined with mobile technology make it easier to connect when out and about.

“Driving this growth in usage is mobile access. I know you’re all thinking ‘here’s another mobile blog post’. But with the launch rate and uptake of new mobile devices, the web is an anytime, anywhere proposition that’s no longer about sitting in the corner on your PC.” (From Speaking Sensis.)

iPad: You have to go pretty far off the beaten path to escape this topic…
The iPad is creating plenty of buzz and technolust drooling even in the middle of the country, where we live. But Apple couldn’t find a more on-target demographic than the ad:tech crowd in San Francisco.

“…that glorious iPad…. I am going to pack loads of business cards and drop them in as many fishbowls as possible. That iPad is mine, baby.” (From Two Men and the Internets.)

(Note: We know this hopeful attendee didn’t win the iPad that Acxiom gave away on day 2, because our director of marketing did.)

Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketers need to change with the technology. Mobile creates a new opportunity for affiliates. Their role hasn’t gelled yet, but those who can help serve up the right offer to the right person in the right place will get a piece of the pie.

“I’ve long wondered when affiliate marketing would enter the mobile space, and now seems to be the time.” (From Luffemann.)

Travel issues
Sometimes the real world interferes with the virtual one. The volcano gets the last word.

“There is no excuse for missing an Ad:Tech meeting quite like a volcano blew up so i have to stay home.” (From Wicked Fire.)

Activities that are more strategic and proactive are best informed by an analytical listening platform like Networked Insights’ SocialSense. We cover the orange section of the chart. Those activities in the gray section are typically associated with monitoring solutions. Sure, there’s some value in the gray area. But with all the interest in quantifying and evaluating ROI from social media, the orange activities are worth noting for their high ROI value.

Being smart and informed early in the process (regarding Market Research, for example) pays greater dividends than being smart later (Crisis Management, for example).

Still, a marketer’s first thought about using social-media data is often found at the bottom left of the chart around PR activities. I hope this chart encourages marketers to think more broadly. As you begin to track patterns over mentions, moving rightward and upward across the landscape of the Analytics chart, you’ll reap greater rewards and realize significant, measurable ROI from your social-media listening efforts.

Where do you fit on the continuum? Are you operating in the orange area? I’d love to hear your feedback. And please share this chart, either by linking here or passing it along.

The New York Times picked up on part of our report. Here’s the rest.

This was Networked Insights’ second year reporting on the buzz around Super Bowl ads. The analysis from our SocialSense listening platform reports on engagement, a measure beyond frequency of posts. It factors in other post consumption (eg, reads) and influence of the poster. Like last year, we’re also calculating Social ROI — what a company spent on ads in relation to the lift they did or didn’t get.

Teleflora gets an “Insighty” for winning two years in a row. Volkswagen and Focus on the Family also sparked high engagement for dollars spent, placing second and third.

The data shows Motorola bringing up the rear. And there were other players, like the e-Trade baby ads, whose online buzz didn’t measure up to the pre-game hype.

Both Coke and Pepsi (the latter who famously didn’t buy an ad this year) were in the middle of the pack. But, comparing the spend on Coke’s two ads to Pepsi’s social media spend, we rate Coke at a Social Media ROI of +26 (160% increase in interactions) and Pepsi at virtually flat ROI (+10% interactions).  So, though Pepsi’s campaign certainly had merit and created buzz in the weeks before the game, they might have done better to top it all off with a traditional TV ad.

See the chart below for the big winners and losers.

You can and should read the whole article, but here’s the crux, worth repeating:

“Listening is scary. … It’s a big change from our traditional way of thinking. So, the single biggest opportunity in the history of consumer marketing lays dormant. The singular opportunity to tap into the brain of today’s newly empowered consumer in such a natural way that what we hear is the purest ‘research’ ever is buried in nay-saying.”

In as much as that’s true, it signals a tremendous missed opportunity. Though it’s important to note that many ad agencies and large brands DO get it. They understand that listening can fuel insights that drive better campaigns, ad buys, and ultimately, business. Our client list features many forward-thinking, major brands and agencies, and it’s growing.

But Neff is right, generally, about the foot dragging. And here’s one explanation, beyond “new is scary.” It’s the confusion between the benefits of monitoring and listening.

Monitoring is best at finding threats. Listening is best at identifying opportunities. Many times, these terms are confused or used interchangeably.

Even Neff’s piece, which starts off talking about “listening,” devotes much of the space to discussing the value of tracking threats (e.g., Johnson & Johnson Motrin-gate).

It’s understandable that marketers might be resentful about the need to monitor threats via social media. After all, brands used to own their reputations to a much greater degree before social media came along and handed the keys to the consumers. It hardly seems like a gift if it means one more new front to defend on. Previously, the only way into a brand’s castle was via a phone-based market-research report.

Monitoring will become increasingly routinized, straightforward, and inexpensive or free. The future of listening holds limitless possibility.

As ad agencies and brands increasingly understand the real advantage of listening—letting consumers’ opinions and ideas provide the fuel for insights—the value becomes clear. Consumers now provide a speedier, comparatively inexpensive source of market research and innovation. And that’s a far different perspective than watching consumer activity like a dark cloud on the horizon.

• Nerds use social networking to find big red balloons. Would you like that $40,000 in cash or check? MIT students quickly solved Darpa’s treasure hunt by going viral.
• See traditional and digital marketing integration at its finest: 5 companies that got it right in 2009.
• I call your “search-engine optimization” and raise you “real-time search” plus a huge dose of social-branding reality. The nimble behemoth continues to evolve as Google integrates real-time search.
• Now when drug dealers say, “everybody’s doing it,” they’re telling the truth. Pharmaceutical companies take their recommended dose of social-media medication.
• Step right up. Don’t be shy. Brands look to flex their marketing muscles on the social web.
• CEO: Are you sure this is going to work? CMO: 2/3 of us think so. Companies to increase social media budgets in 2010.
• Come out, come out, wherever you are. The location-based social networking space just got a little more crowded.
• I want $55k/year, 401(k), vacation, stock options, medical/dental insurance, tuition reimbursement, gym membership, and access to my social networks. See the future of employee compensation demands.

Such a great point. Counting brand mentions is only the tip of the iceberg yet it’s what so many of the current crop of social media monitoring tools are trading on. They count brand mentions, aggregrate content, and report on it. While they get you looking at social media, they are decidely slim on contextual information unless you have time to do a LOT of reading. Malcolm talks about the importance of framing social dialogue and I think that is key to the next step in the evolution of these tools.

Framing (Malcolm’s take may be slightly different so I won’t speak for him) is essentially a more holistic view of data. It’s putting data in context – relative to a market, a segment, a shared affinity or a goal. This is a shortcoming of many current monitoring tools as they focus on mentions, popularity, sentiment etc. but don’t do much to help you understand the implications of all this data.

Searching for brand mentions and verbatims is relatively cheap and easy to do (as evidenced by the price pressure in monitoring right now). Marketers need more context than brand mentions to make sound business decisions and large companies just coming to the social media table are reluctant to bet significant sums of money on such thin evidence when it comes to informing a large marketing campaign.

So what’s next? Malcolm mentions the new feature from Scout Labs called “Quotes”. It’s a good first step. They are attempting to push the envelope a bit in terms of giving their data more value to the end user. But what can you do to really push the envelope?

How about trend discovery and text analytics? Monitoring solutions rely on keywords – that means that you will find what you look for. What current monitoring tools lack is the ability identify trends or patterns in data that you didn’t know to look for. Text analytics opens this door.

Text analytics is basically a trend discovery engine of the best kind. It identifies trends or patterns in data that you didn’t know to look for. It is a very compelling and powerful technology. Combine deep text analytics with a segmented approach (something we do with SocialSense) and you have what we think is the next step in the evolution of social listening tools. I’m curious, what do you think is next?