At this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) conference, Adam Ostrow, the Executive Editor at Mashable, interviewed Jonathan Carson, the CEO of Digital at Nielsen, on the recent trends, challenges, and anticipated changes that Nielsen has seen in social media.

The Second Screen Experience

Carson explains that the biggest trend that Nielsen has seen is the massive adoption of mobile media and smart phone usage while watching TV, possibly driven by advancements in app development.

During the interview, Carson discussed the challenges that marketers and advertisers are encountering with the rise of corresponding mobile and TV usage. The amount of people who actively use a tablet, computer, or smart phone while watching TV continues to increase. This trend has created a challenge for companies to develop a 360 experience for viewers. One of the biggest obstacles companies face when creating a 360 experience is determining how to connect with the consumer when their attention is divided between the TV and their computer or mobile device.

Companies have responded to the challenge of creating a second screen experience for viewers by designing content that corresponds with the show through custom apps and social media platforms, such as Twitter and GetGlue.

Measuring Multi-Screen Experiences

The rise of the multiple screen experience has also created the challenge of determining what and how to measure the success of reaching and interacting with an audience. Carson explains that measurements will no longer center around content; rather, measurements will focus on the audience:

• Who is the audience
• How are they reached
• How do they distribute content
• Who are the most influential audience members

In addition, Carson explains that an item we have yet to determine how to properly measure, but that is highly influential, is how to measure audience sentiment. However, that will require a few big breakthroughs in artificial intelligence so that computers can differentiate a positive, negative, and sarcastic tweet about a brand.

View the Mashable’s full interview with Johnathan Carson below.

By Brianna Smith