Social TV: Linking TV Content to Buzz and Sales

“Social TV” is a term that broadly describes the online social interactions occurring between viewers while watching television. In this paper, we show that TV networks can derive value from social media content placed in shows because it leads to increased word of mouth via online posts, and it highly correlates with TV show related sales. In short, we show that TV event triggers change the online behavior of viewers. In this paper, we first show that using social media content on the televised American reality singing competition, The Voice, led to increased social media engagement during the TV broadcast. We then illustrate that social media buzz about a contestant after a performance is highly correlated with song sales from that contestant’s performance. We believe this to be the first study linking TV content to buzz and sales in real time.