While early social analytics tools measured likes, shares and sentiment, they didn’t capture total consumer engagement with brand or publisher content.
It’s a problem social TV tool Canvs has teamed up with Turner Broadcasting and other media companies to solve.
The premise of the partnership, revealed Tuesday, is that consumers are more apt to read and share content they’re engaged with emotionally. Canvs combines API-based measurements through third-party partners like Nielsen Social and Twitter TV Ratings with its own analysis.
Canvs considers itself a form of digital focus group. It categorizes content through a feature called emotional reaction scoring, which measures consumer engagement with content across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube based on 56 attributes. Canvs also scores more than 4 million phrases, accounting for millennial slang like “yolo” or “bae.”
“We see tremendous opportunity around qualitative measurement where you not only determine if you’ve reached your target, but what content resonated with them and why?” said Jared Feldman, founder and CEO of Canvs. “Early on, social was used more for vanity metrics where you were counting likes or impressions.”
But Canvs differs from early social monitoring tools because it applies to both activation and content creation, which is the basis of its new Turner deal.
Turner will tap Canvs’ analytics within its own social data tool, Launchpad, which launched at CES in January. The tool is used by 20 advertisers, including Intel and AT&T.
Turner is running more campaigns for movie studios and game publishers, according to Frank Kavilanz, VP of Ignite Social, Turner’s data and social content division, who formerly headed up partnerships and sales at NowThis News.
Turner works with Canvs and other partners to identify and match emotionally engaging moments on social with Turner Launchpad segments.
Turner’s branded content teams might then take those content discoveries and feed them back into strategies that improve the tonality of its own content and that of its advertisers.
Although the goal is to get to as near real time as possible, which isn’t yet a reality, the broadcaster can get much more proactive with content and sponsorship planning.
“You’re able to focus on and promote moments that will invoke a share,” Kavilanz said. “Half the battle in media and programming is getting the people to enjoy the content. The other battle is getting them to share. In social, you need both elements.”
Early results for Launchpad campaigns have been promising, according to Kavilanz.
For instance, Turner claims four of the top five most-viewed Conan O’Brien videos on social were distributed and amplified with Launchpad. And, by targeting a segment of gamers with content that Launchpad deemed more “emotionally engaging”, it generated 5.5 million (or 175% more) video views.
There are also implications for Turner Native Plus, the broadcaster’s version of a native ad placement, which replaces a traditional commercial break with an ad for a single advertiser designed to contextually fit with adjacent programming.
“As we go deeper and develop these ‘Turner as a platform’ opportunities, we might use insights from Launchpad to launch an episode first into social to see how [brand content] is performing,” Kavilanz said. “With Native Plus, where we’re taking over a two-minute pod, having scale that extends from social to inform digital and on-air linear [programming] makes sense.”
