A study by research firm SecondSync has revealed that 60% of television-themed interactions which take place on Facebook, happen while the show being talked about is broadcast and that 80% of these posts are generated from mobile devices. It was previously assumed that Facebook posts relating to a particular television show were being posted before or after the show had aired.
The report stated that: “TV is an important area for Facebook and it has been actively encouraging activity in this space for some time. Pages for shows, the adoption of the hashtag and the “Watching’ status update have all contributed to the high volume of interactions.’
A good indication of this took place during the final episode of Breaking Bad when 4,477,454 show- related interactions took place on Facebook, about 22% of the AMC network’s TV audience.
The report described how the social media platform may benefit certain sectors of the television market, stating: “When looked at holistically, real-time activity around TV and sport on the Facebook platform is hugely compelling and there are important commercial implications. Audience measurement, TV planning, content discovery, direct response advertising, TV commissioning and research are just some of the sectors that will benefit from the insights coming out of the world’s biggest social network.’
