Viacom and Mass Relevance Partner to Launch EchoGraph
Media conglomerate Viacom has partnered with Mass Relevance, a company that helps brands enhance and curate their social media content, to launch EchoGraph, a social media measurement platform that will track and analyze social activity for advertisers.
"We are listening to social media all the time," says Jesse Redniss, chief strategy officer at Mass Relevance. "With EchoGraph, we can see whenever anyone mentions Viacom, all its brands and products, and any of its advertisers."
Mass Relevance, which recently merged with Spredfast, a Brandwatch partner, will work exclusively with Viacom to measure earned media generated by Viacom client campaigns across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Vine, Google+, and YouTube in real time. With EchoGraph, Viacom will be able to provide clients with comprehensive data and analysis regarding reach, social activity, types of engagement, hashtag popularity, influencers, and more.
"Viacom caters to a ton of different clients, and they want to be able to tell them about the customer journey across all of the platforms that their customers are on," Redniss says.
"This is a great tool for Viacom to see what's going on across all of social media and report back to their clients," Redniss explains. "It will help them to see their consumer engagement across platforms and what people are talking about with regard to their shows and advertisers."
The EchoGraph social analytics platform will support Viacom Echo, a client-service offering through which Viacom Velocity creates custom content to deliver measured earned media for advertisers. Echo extends advertisers' messages beyond Viacom's owned and operated linear, digital, and mobile screens and into the social ecosystem, including the company's Twitter Amplify and Tumblr partnerships.
"We've cracked the code on how to connect advertisers to the enormous social activity around our networks but, until now, the missing piece was comprehensive measurement," said Jeff Lucas, head of sales for music and entertainment at Viacom Media Networks, in a statement. "Through EchoGraph, we can offer clients true accountability and tell the full story of how our custom campaigns carry their brand messages across the social sphere."
According to Redniss, Mass Relevance has been working with Viacom for quite some time. "We have a long history of working alongside this innovative company to help them push the boundaries of the TV and entertainment industry," he states. "EchoGraph is a groundbreaking approach in identifying the core value of social TV for their brand partners."
Social media, Redniss adds, is an entirely new way for media companies to reach consumers. "Social is a huge area for them to grow into, he says. "Social is a huge opportunity for them to create content."
Viacom and Mass Relevance have partnered previously to track and measure social integrations for programming and advertiser campaigns, including MTV's MTV Video Music Awards, MTV Movie Awards, and Catfish: The TV Show. Mass Relevance is the only certified partner for both Twitter and Facebook and the company can curate content streams from a broad range of social platforms.
Viacom is home to premier global media brands, including MTV, VH1, CMT, Logo, BET, CENTRIC, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., TeenNick, Nicktoons, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, TV Land, SPIKE, Paramount Channel, and VIVA. Its channels reach approximately 700 million households worldwide.
Mass Relevance has previously worked with Fox, the first media company to adopt The Product Studio, an outlet to enable marketers to create opportunities for customers to interact with brands through social media. Fox Sports used the platform to create a Twitter Q&A during the 2012 Summer Olympics for the U.S. women's soccer gold medal match.
Programs such as American Idol, X Factor, and The Voice use Mass Relevance tools to show television viewers what people are saying on Twitter about the performances in real time. Facebook and CNN used them to power election coverage with heat maps.
"This is all very exciting for us because these types of projects are all very new in this space," Redniss says.