Social Media Measurement Still a Mystery

Written by Ryan Lawler

Tuesday, December 9. 2008 at 07:30 PM EST 1 comment

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NEW YORK -- If you're a brand advertiser who doesn't know how social media is affecting your company's message, have no fear -- there are plenty of professionals in the measurement industry who haven't quite figured it out yet, either.

That was the message was sent by executives from Nielsen Online and TNS Cymfony on a panel that was all about social media measurement.

Speaking at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Leadership Forum earlier this week, Nielsen vice president of media analytics Jon Gibs said that there is "such a proliferation of social media types that creating one form of media measurement for all social media is incredibly tricky."

But that hasn't stopped Nielsen from trying: The online analytics company has come up with a fancy methodology called "BuzzReach" to measure the amount of social or viral pickup that online campaigns can get from social media. By combining BuzzReach with an estimated amount of "influence" that certain sites have, Gibs says that one could even estimate social media's "BuzzPotential."

Jim Nail, chief strategy and marketing officer of Cymfony, provided a contrarian take on social media measurement. To Nail, advertisers shouldn't be measuring the total number of blog posts or tweets about a product to determine the effect that social media have on a product, but rather, using social media to see how other campaigns are working. 

"Audience measurement isn't the point here," Nail said. "I can see that there are 15 gazillion posts about my product, but that's not particularly actionable [sic] information."

Rather than measuring social media to see how it is affecting brand awareness, Nail suggests that advertisers should instead use it as a tool to determine how well their offline campaigns are doing. 

"Eighty percent of marketing happens offline, and social media gives a view into what's happening offline," Nail says.