Reality and entertainment television has driven the highest level of social media engagement over the past year, closely followed by current affairs programmes, according to new research.
Kantar measured engagement amongst UK viewers between 1stDecember 2018 and 30th November 2019, using the Kantar Social TV Ratings tool, which launched in 2014 as the official metric for understanding, analysing and benchmarking the impact of social media on TV viewing habits.
Over the 12-month period studied, there was a total of over 98 million TV-related tweets; a 23 million increase from last year’s 75 million. Reality TV programme Love Island, was the most tweeted about programme for another year, attracting over 8 million tweets in total, followed by Question Time at 6 million, and Good Morning Britain at 3 million. The increased conversation, driving a total of 41 billion impressions over the year, shows that more and more people are taking to social media to talk about their favourite shows.
Reality reigns supreme
Kantar data reveals that the top individual broadcasts from 2019, were dominated by entertainment and reality TV. The Eurovision Song Contest 2019 was the most tweeted about broadcast, attracting almost 9 million tweets, followed by the Brit Awards at 5 million and the opening episode of Love Island Series 5 at over 2 million. Entertainment and reality TV still reign supreme when it comes to generating instant social media engagement.
Despite being one of the most discussed TV programmes on social media, Question Time failed to enter the top 20 individual broadcasts. Whilst viewers are keen to engage with political debate, the majority are choosing to do so outside of linear broadcast times.
Kantar’s data confirms this, showing that overall only 21% of TV-related social media activity took place during the broadcast window, suggesting that streaming services and on-demand TV are having a significant impact on viewing habits and how audiences engage with their favourite shows.
Netflix and chill
Despite much hype surrounding the potential for streaming services to overtake broadcast media audiences, Netflix and Amazon are still lagging behind when it comes to generating social media buzz. Netflix beat Amazon to the top spot, with the top three most tweeted about Netflix and Amazon shows all being Netflix offerings. Black Mirror took the top spot generating 1 million tweets, followed by Shadowhunters and Umbrella Academy at 508k and 500k tweets respectively. Good Omens was the only Amazon show to enter into the top five, with 497k tweets.
Whilst Netflix has invested in a winning social media strategy that has strengthened its brand, this is yet to see significant returns with UK audiences. For the time being, audiences are significantly more energised by reality, entertainment and current affairs programming. The BBC was the top tweeted about channel, with its programmes bringing in a total of 28 million tweets, followed by ITV at 14.9 million, ITV2 at 8.9 million and BBC 2 at 6.8 million. Netflix comes in sixth with 6 million, and Amazon in 10th place at 1.5 million.
Mark Inskip, CEO UK & Ireland for Kantar’s media division, comments: “The way in which we consume TV may be evolving at a rapid pace, but one thing remains the same: people have their favourite programmes and they like to talk about them. More than ever, we are seeing Brits take to social media to share their views and opinions on TV content and while an increasing volume of that conversation is happening outside of the traditional broadcast window, linear TV channels and programmes are still reigning over on-demand disruptors. For brands and broadcasters, it’s critical to understand the ways in which viewers are watching – and engaging with – TV programmes, adapting their strategies to work with consumers on their terms, providing them with the content they want, where they want it, when they want it.”
Methodology
• Data provided from Instar Social using only UK originating Tweets.
• Tweets identified through coding specific keywords and hashtags assigned by Kantar’s UK Social TV team.
• Impressions are the number of times that a Tweet or reTweet has been seen or has had the opportunity to be seen about a specific program. Each Twitter user is counted as many times as they have seen Tweets or reTweets about a program.
• Unique Authors are calculated as the number of unique authors of Tweets about the program in question.
• Broadcast Window data calculated as Tweets and re-Tweets captured during the live program broadcast +/- 30 minutes either side.
• All other data is calculated via a 24/7 tracking method which captures engagement beyond the traditional broadcast window. This method tracks Twitter engagement with programs on a 24/7 basis – i.e. Tweets about a program are captured every day, all day whether the program is being broadcast or not.