Bluefin Labs Launches First Social TV Analytics Product Built for Brands

PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, SMG and Others Link TV Ads to Social Media Commentary with New Analytics Platform

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bluefin Labs, the social TV analytics company, today announced the launch of Signals Brand Edition, a platform that measures and analyzes the social media performance of TV ad campaigns at scale. Since the birth of television advertising, there has never been an automated system that tracks all commercials – where they are running and how people are responding in social media – until now. Bluefin Labs launches with several initial clients including PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Mars, Humana and Quicken Loans, together with agency partners Starcom MediaVest Group, Hill Holliday, Horizon Media, Initiative, MediaCom, Optimedia and Zenith Media.

“Signals Brand Edition opens the door to fully integrated cross-channel marketing across offline TV and online social media.”

The introduction of Signals Brand Edition gives brands the ability to track commercials that run across U.S. national television, see a clear picture of when and where they air, and gain insight into how a TV campaign moves consumer conversation in social media. Via an online dashboard, brands can now measure the impact of TV ads on brand conversation and discover the volume of social media users exposed to their TV ads. Signals Brand Edition also analyzes brand and lifestyle affinities of TV audiences, so brands can better target their TV campaign toward consumers who are most likely to respond and engage.

“For the first time, brands can see how their TV advertising drives conversations on Twitter and Facebook,” said Deb Roy, co-founder, chairman, and CEO, Bluefin Labs. “Signals Brand Edition opens the door to fully integrated cross-channel marketing across offline TV and online social media.”

With Signals Brand Edition, brands and their agencies will be able to make better-informed TV media investment and creative decisions. By combining the predictive intelligence of Bluefin’s data with customized audience segments, brands and agencies can more efficiently match TV shows, networks, programming genres and day-parts with TV ads and integrations. All data will be available to clients on an overnight basis, so that brands can immediately monitor and reconcile the placement of their ads and gain insights into their competitors’ TV media strategies.

“Working with Bluefin Labs over the last year has left us incredibly impressed with the quality of insights they are able to generate through social TV analytics,” said Shiv Singh, Global Head of Digital, PepsiCo Beverages. “Bluefin Labs is providing measurement of a process that traditionally lacks transparency, providing us with a proven solution for planning our advertising campaigns.”

“Our goal is to make our consumers' lives easier and more delicious. That’s why it’s so important for us to engage with our consumers and understand what they think about our brands as driven by every channel,” said Bonin Bough, Vice President of Global Digital and Consumer Engagement, Kraft Foods. “Bluefin Labs provides us with nearly real-time insight into how the general public is responding to our ads – which is an unprecedented feedback loop. This will help us to refine nearly all aspects of our television advertising campaigns – from creative to planning to overall branding strategy – and be more relevant to our consumers.”

Since the 2011 introduction of Bluefin Labs’ initial product, Signals Network Edition, Bluefin Labs has provided enterprise-quality social TV analytics for more than one million TV telecasts airing across all dayparts and programming genres. Currently, over 40 of the largest U.S. broadcast and cable television networks use Signals Network Edition. Today, Bluefin Labs also released significant feature enhancements to Signals Network Edition, including: minute-by-minute social tracking of TV telecasts, new visualizations for social TV data, and new affinity combinations.

About Bluefin Labs

Bluefin Labs is a social TV analytics company providing solutions to brand advertisers, advertising agencies, and TV networks. Bluefin Labs’ technology and data enable clients, for the first time, to tap into data at scale that links people’s social media commentary to the shows and commercials they watch on TV. Grounded in 15 years of cognitive science and machine learning research at the MIT Media Lab, Bluefin Labs was founded by Deb Roy and Michael Fleischman in 2008 and is headquartered in Cambridge, MA. For more about Bluefin Labs, visit www.bluefinlabs.com.