Originally announced last year, the new Kantar Twitter TV Ratings tool has been developed with Twitter as part of a global partnership. The tool includes new metrics such as unique authors (people tweeting) and their affinity to brands, channels and programmes; unique audience (those that have viewed tweets related to programmes) and impressions (the total number of times a tweet or retweet about a programme has been seen), as well as existing metrics including number of tweets and retweets about a programme before, during and after transmission and the average number of tweets per minute and highest volume of tweets per minute linked to a programme.

“The launch of the first official Twitter TV metrics in the UK gives the broadcast industry official insight for social TV engagement to complement the Barb gold-standard TV measurement currency,” said Andy Brown, global CEO and chairman of Kantar Media. “Using the Kantar Twitter TV Ratings; broadcasters, planners and advertisers will be able to assess programmes and series, plan programme promotions more effectively and assist media buyers and sellers to integrate social data more comprehensively into the TV component of their media mix.”

The tool will be available from mid-October.