The CRE's recently completed "Talking Social TV" study of the relationship of social media use and TV viewing was the topic of a June ARF presentation and subsequent luncheon discussion, as well as a July webinar.

The multi-pronged effort, encompassing several research partners and academics, and some 1,700 active participants, enabled the CRE to learn that:

• Consumers' daily interaction with social media in relation to their television viewing is relatively modest compared to other forms of communication – but the interaction with TV increases for those using social media one or more times per week, suggesting growth potential for social media as an influence on TV viewing.

• Only 1.5% of study respondents report being drawn to existing TV shows by social media – but that number increases to 6% when asked about new shows;

• Actively involved social-media "Super Connectors" are 12% of the public and tend to be younger and female;.

• Hispanics are more involved with social media than the general population, especially while watching television;

• The effect of social media on regular viewers – or, "repeaters" – of a television show is much higher relative to the impact on people who infrequently sample a show.

"Talking Social TV" helped us understand that social media is incrementally influential in drawing viewers to new shows as opposed to existing shows, and may have a stronger role in building relationships with a show for existing viewers than in drawing newer viewers to that show," said Beth Rockwood, Senior Vice President, Market Resources, Discovery Communications, and chair of the CRE's Social Media Committee. "If programmers already have a regular viewer watching their show, they can engage them further.

"The CRE isn't finished with this topic," Rockwood noted. "We plan to launch a follow-up study later this year. Readers can follow our progress at www.researchexcellence.com."

The presentation on the "Talking Social TV" study findings can be found on the Social Media Committee page of the CRE website, under "New Research."

It may be intuitive that a mobile-video viewer is going to pay closer attention when viewing video on a smartphone as opposed to a larger device. The CRE has been able to learn just how much more closely attention is paid – as well as where the user is likely to watch TV on a mobile device.

The CRE's "TV Untethered" study, encompassing nearly 6,000 participants and more than 393,000 TV viewing occasions, provided significant findings, among them:

• Mobile-TV viewers performed unrelated multi-tasking on other electronic devices during only 14% of the occasions on which they viewed TV programming on smartphones. This compared to 27% for tablet viewing, 31% for computer (desktop and laptop) viewing and 34% of the television-set viewing occasions, according to the study participants.

• At the same time, viewers watching a TV show on a smartphone also were more likely to engage in online activities related to that show – such as looking up show information, or posting about the show on social networks. Such activity occurred during 21% of the television set viewing occasions, 27% for tablet viewing occasions, 31% for computer viewing occasions and 39% of the smartphone viewing occasions.

Possibly less intuitive were the findings of just how much viewing of television content on mobile devices takes place in the home. The study found 82% for both tablets and computers (laptop and PC) and 64% for smartphones

Why? Convenience and multi-episode "binging" drive mobile viewing; ad avoidance is not a primary motivator. Forty-nine percent of participants cited "more convenient" as their top reason for viewing video on a mobile device; 13% cited "watch multiple episodes"; only 5% cited "fewer ads."

Other "TV Untethered" learnings:

• Content availability often drives device selection (e.g., certain programs or episodes may only be available to a consumer via mobile device);

• Mobile devices let people watch different shows at the same time (e.g., one person watching the television, another watching separate programming on a tablet);

• Mobile TV viewers are often heavy overall TV viewers and are more likely than non-mobile-TV viewers to be TV show opinion leaders and to use social media to talk about TV.

Joanne Burns, Head of Research of Fox's 20th Television, and Laura Cowan, Research Director, LIN Media, oversaw the study as co-chairs of the CRE's Media Consumption & Engagement (MC&E;) Committee.

"While mobile-video consumption remains a small minority of total television consumption, nearly 41 million Americans today are watching video on mobile devices, according to Nielsen – and that is impacting overall TV consumption," Burns said. "People are bringing devices from room to room, and out of the home, and on their commutes; smartphones are becoming an important device for viewing professional TV content."

"It all goes to convenience and portability; more people are watching more TV – everywhere – and increasingly on smartphones," Cowan said. "TV audience researchers will want to emphasize the need to design future measurement to capture online and in-app viewing."

The full report on the "TV Untethered" study findings can be found (under "New Research") on the Media Consumption & Engagement Committee page at the CRE website.

The CRE's ROI Committee, chaired by David Poltrack, has scheduled a presentation for September 20 to discuss the latest trends in marketing mix modeling.

The CRE recently completed a whitepaper, on The Current State of Marketing Mix Models, reflecting some 50 in-person interviews including leading modeling firms, prominent academics, agencies, and modeling clients at major advertisers recruited with the support of ANA. The findings were presented at the June ARF conference.

The CRE's objectives in what is an ongoing effort include the development of an in-depth understanding of principal ROI methods used; defining best practices; and recommending priority areas for industry improvement.

More information on the September presentation will be posted to the CRE homepage, in the "Events" section.

Visitors to the CRE site also can find the announcement of the whitepaper findings and the ARF presentation

The CRE welcomes its newest members:

• Cheryl Brink, Vice President, Digital Research & Analytics, Scripps Networks Interactive
• Laura Cowan, Research Director, LIN Media
• Tanya Giles, Executive Vice President, Strategic Insights and Research, Viacom Entertainment Group
• Jed Meyer, U.S. Research Director, Annalect, a unit of Omnicom Media Group
• Bryon Schafer, Director of Research and Sales Strategy, Hulu LLC
• Stacey Schulman, Senior Vice President and Chief Research Officer, Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB)

The CRE encourages audience research executives to apply for membership – to share views and ideas with fellow research leaders and to become part of our effort to advance the quality and practice of audience research. We also invite researchers interested in our work who simply would like to join one of our Committees. In either case, please drop us a note at [email protected].

Interest in cross-platform measurement is growing substantially throughout the research community. Therefore, CRE is opening up a new area of possible focus: comparability of cross-platform impressions. CRE Media Consumption & Engagement Committee Chair Laura Cowan, research director of LIN Media, is leading an effort to study the issue further.

Separately, the growth of cross-platform has made it important to differentiate the effects of commercial pod length and venue – namely, TV screen, computer, tablet and smartphone. A second new area of possible CRE focus then is pod effects. Hadassa Gerber, director of research and systems at the Syndicated Network Television Association (SNTA) is leading an effort to explore the impact of varying commercial pod lengths in different venues.

Any readers interested in participating with the CRE in the discussion of these topics are invited to email us at [email protected].

More than 400 research professionals and others throughout the media and advertising industries are regularly sharing news and viewpoints on the Council for Research Excellence LinkedIn Group.

Join us on Twitter as well – @CREtalk – where we provide news, views and updates on the CRE and all things audience research.

• Our next "Meet the CRE" webinar will be on Thursday, September 26, at 2:00 p.m. eastern. We hope you will be able to join us. If you are not already receiving our webinar alerts, you can sign up at the CRE homepage.