Comscore said it acquired Shareablee, a measurement company that specializes in the social media space, for as much as $45 million..

Comscore said the deal closed Thursday.

Shareablee’s analytics were used by clients including Mondelez, GroupM,  ESPN, NBCUniversal and Vox Media.

With Shareablee in the fold, Comscore plans to expand its Media Metrix and Video Metrix currencies to include Shareablee’s social media engagement and video insights.

"Comscore is committed to the future and helping customers have a comprehensive view of the consumer across platforms, while understanding the unique engagement on premium video. The future of measurement would not be complete without including the impressions delivered by the social media platforms," said Comscore CEO Bill Livek. "For marketers, this inclusion into our currencies will present great opportunity to maximize their outcomes on advertising investments. We see many opportunities to help our clients grow their viewing audiences and maximize their impact using social platforms."

Comscore plans to retain key members of Shareablee management in leadership roles including Tania Yuki, Greg Dale and Jonathan Lieberman.

"At our core, we believe that content matters, and that data and insights can make storytelling more impactful. We are thrilled to join forces with Comscoreand look forward to finding new ways to jointly drive innovation," said Tania Yuki, CEO and Founder of Shareablee. "Our large-scale social measurement capabilities provide critical insight into changing content consumption and consumer behaviors, particularly when it comes to shedding light on Gen Z, and fit perfectly alongside Comscore's comprehensive cross-platform intelligence. Bringing the resources and measurement sophistication of Comscore to our product development capabilities will be very exciting for the whole market."■

After a year that saw the largest civil-rights demonstrations and protests against police brutality since the 1960s, new research is highlighting the need for programmers and operators to do a better job of serving multicultural audiences if they want to thrive in the emerging streaming and digital landscape. 

“The size of opportunity [with multicultural audiences] just continues to grow,” said Adriana Waterston, senior VP of insights and strategy at Horowitz Research, which has researched multicultural audiences for several decades.

Horowitz Research surveys show that multicultural audiences are embracing pay TV and digital technologies at higher rates than the normal population. For example, 42% of the population subscribes to a cable operator such as Comcast, but higher subscription rates than that can be found among African-Americans (50%), Asian-Americans (47%) and Hispanics (43%). Multicultural audiences are also avid consumers of streaming media, with 72% of African-Americans streaming weekly, 73% of Asian-Americans and 70% of Hispanics, versus 68% of the overall population, according to Horowitz. 

“Obviously viewers have been migrating to consume content on digital platforms, and COVID-19 has really has really accelerated that trend,” Romina Rosado, executive VP of entertainment and content strategy for NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, said. “But some of these trends hit Hispanic media brands such as Telemundo in a different way, because our audience is just so much younger. The median age of the U.S. Hispanic is 29, which is significantly younger than the non-Hispanic white audience, and they are consuming content in completely different ways.”

That has helped produce a record-setting year on digital media, with streaming on the Telemundo app showing a 38% jump between January and November of 2020 compared to a year earlier. 

“We crossed 134 million followers this year on social media, and we’re seeing over 31 million engagements every month on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook,” Rosado noted. Telemundo also has about 11.3 million subscribers on YouTube, according to audience-based social media measurement firm Shareablee.

Despite the importance of multicultural customers with their avid consumption of video, a recent survey from Horowitz Research found widespread discontent with TV and the media. Fifty-one percent of African-American respondents, 36% of Hispanics, 64% of Asians and 58% of LGBTQ individuals said they are not represented enough in U.S. TV shows and movies. 

A Nielsen analysis of the 300 most-viewed programs on TV and streaming reinforced those perceptions. Even though Hispanics comprise 18.8% of the overall population, Hispanic talent appeared in only 5.1% of the screen time on broadcast TV programs, 3% on cable shows and 10.1% on SVOD programs. African-Americans, with 14.1% of the total population, were on screen just 7.8% of the time on cable shows, versus a 24.7% screen-time share on broadcast and 18.8% on SVOD. 

“I think 2020 has shown light on the fact that these audiences have not only been underserved and redlined,” Waterston said. “These audiences are well aware of the problems. If you are not doing the due diligence to understand what these different diverse groups need, then you need to examine the implicit biases or systemic structural reasons that are preventing you from addressing the needs of these consumers.”

542.4 million
The number of social "actions" -- likes, shares, retweets, comments, reblogs and dislikes -- driven by TV networks and shows across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and YouTube in October. Engagement for TV networks increased 7% month-to-month from September, boosted by a 35% uptick on Instagram and a 15% rise on Twitter.

92.4 million
The number of actions around ESPN, social media's most engaging TV network in October. Other cable networks in the Top 10 were Fox News, No. 5, with 29.6 million actions; MTV, No. 6, with 27.4 million; AMC, No. 8, with 25 million (driven by The Walking Dead, which premiered Oct. 8, pushing the network into the Top 10 for the first time); and E!, No. 9, with 23.6 million.

256%
Esquire Network's month-to-month social engagement gain in the TV Network category from September to October, driven by a viral video post for the show Car Matchmaker.

51.9 million
The number of actions generated by ESPN's Sports Center, TV's most socially engaging show in October. Rounding out the Top 5 were AMC's The Walking Dead (22.4 million actions), ABC's America's Funniest Home Videos (7.6 million), NBC's Today (7.1 million) and ABC's Good Morning America (5.7 million).

SOURCE: Social Scorecard for October, Shareablee, a social media benchmarking and audience analysis firm (Nov. 17, 2015)