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A new study funded by a TV network and Twitter found that TV and Twitter go great together — not just by getting viewers to watch shows, but by getting them to embrace products promoted by the shows.

First, TV-related tweets can inspire people to immediately watch a show they've never seen before, or resume watching shows they'd stopped watching.

The survey – ”Discovering the Value of Earned Audience — How Twitter Expressions Activate Consumers” — included 12,577 people recruited on Twitter over two weeks. Participants were surveyed within 24 hours of watching and/or tweeting during primetime.

90% of those who see TV show-related tweets have taken “immediate action” -- either to watch a particular TV, search for related information, or share content.

the research says of those exposed to TV-related tweets, 77% have watched TV show content; 42% have made a plan to watch the show later; 38% have watched episodes online; and 33% have changed the channel to watch the show.

76% have done searches for a show and 78% has clicked on a show’s hashtag or followed a talent’s handle or retweet TV-related tweets.

ut Nascar's new page has a key new feature, which is the ability to pull in tweets related to a live event from a variety of sources. In the case of Nascar, tweets about Pocono 400 were being pulled in from drivers like Jeff Gordon as well as sports writers, and the curation was executed through an algorithm that searched for relevant content with the assistance of human editors, according to a Twitter blog post. It's further evidence of Twitter's desire to be the platform advertisers turn to when they're looking to execute promotions around major live events such as the Super Bowl or the Oscars. Last month, they announced a partnership with ESPN to create branded campaigns around tentpole sports events.

#Nascar page is the first of its kind and has a slightly different layout than the brand pages Twitter unveiled in December, which feature customizable header images and enable brands to keep a particular tweet -- often a photo or video that can auto-expand -- at the top,

ne thing is immediately clear: There is practically no overlap between the most-tweeted shows on TV and the highest-rated shows.

Seen through a Twitter lens, the No. 1 television show for the week of Sept. 23 to 29 was AMC’s “Breaking Bad” by a mile, with 9.28 million people seeing tweets about the show’s finale — but the episode wasn’t even among the top 20 in total viewership for the period, according to Nielsen primetime ratings.

But the divergence between the top shows Americans actually watch on TV and what they talk about on Twitter illustrates that there is not a strong correlation, today, between the two mediums. Only one show, two airings of NBC’s “The Voice,” appear in both top 10 rankings.

The Canvs analysis covered about 185,000 tweets, just a portion of the half-a-million tweets that Canvs identified as being related to the finale. The platform only analyzes tweets it is sure it can interpret accurately, founder and CEO Jared Feldman told me. <div><a href="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=%2F4624%2FTheAtlanticOnline%2Fchannel_technology&t=src%3Dblog%26by%3Dadrienne-lafrance%26title%3Dan-algorithm-knows-who-liked-the-em-how-i-met-your-mother-em-finale%26pos%3Din-article&sz=300x185&c=72813788&tile=3" title=""><img src="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=%2F4624%2FTheAtlanticOnline%2Fchannel_technology&t=src%3Dblog%26by%3Dadrienne-lafrance%26title%3Dan-algorithm-knows-who-liked-the-em-how-i-met-your-mother-em-finale%26pos%3Din-article&sz=300x185&c=72813788&tile=3" alt="" /></a></div>

An algorithm might recognize the word "enjoy" in a tweet that says, I really didn't enjoy the How I Met Your Mother finale, without realizing that the tweet isn't ultimately positive. You can teach a computer to recognize the "didn't" before "enjoy," but that doesn't go far enough, either.

The way that 12-year-olds talk about loving Justin Bieber? There's no dictionary on the planet that captures that."

On their own, Twitter efforts resulted in a less-than-inspiring 4% boost in positive reactions to the well-known supermarket. Similarly, TV only managed to generate a measly 4% incline. However, as a twosome, TV and Twitter notched up a far greater 21% rise – that’s 21% more people willing to do their next shop at Sainsbury’s than before.

“This interaction between TV and Twitter is not something that we’ve orchestrated,” Mortensen reminded us. “It’s something that the audience are doing themselves. It’s driven by people, so it’s very natural.”

The findings indicated two different ways of engaging with Twitter in connection with TV – the ‘lean forward’ and ‘lean back’ approaches. Those who ‘lean back’ while interacting want stimulation without having to commit. In causal browsing mode, they will switch between the first and the second screen at will. Advertisers should not make the mistake of thinking that this nonchalant attitude creates disengagement though – having both screens working together keeps people in the living room in front of ads and makes them less likely to wander off. This type of audience are still taking in messages implicitly, and often find themselves unconsciously responding to brands' triggers.

provides Twitter users a directory of live tweet streams for an event or broadcast — from political debates to press conferences to reality TV shows.

team would pick from a roundup of "qualified content producers" — such as writers for newspapers, magazines and blogs in teams' respective hometowns and each list would feature about 10-25 live Tweeters per event

Users can also mix and match their own custom stream of tweets highlighted by Chirp Guide or the site's users

If you can take [our analytics service] and not just do it about [one event like] the Super Bowl but do it for all TV shows … now you have this comprehensive view into how TV is driving engagement.”

Bluefin drills down into specific moments on television, be they advertisements, actual shows or what have you. And Roy says it can grab a larger, more representative slice of the Twitter users tweeting about a specific moment than, say, a hashtag can (as many people may be talking about an event without using a hashtag).

Bluefin runs what’s called an affinity analysis, which lets the company figure out “preexisting affinities between TV program audiences and brands.” Moreover, Bluefin can flesh out a profile of a particular Twitter user tweeting in a specific moment, based on that person’s tweeting history.

ccording to Nielsen’s SocialGuide service, the heaviest Twitter activity appears to be happening during real-time programming minutes and not commercial breaks. After analyzing data culled from 59 broadcast and cable programs, SocialGuide concluded that nearly three-quarters (70 percent) of all airtime tweets were sent during the actual content.

when the spot load is light, the share of tweets issued during the breaks is also light. By the same token, when the programming is weighed down by multiple spots, the volume of tweets sent in commercial time rises proportionately.   

in some of the more compelling programs there are spikes in Twitter activity that coincide with significant plot moments

Nielsen says what is new here is determining “reach," the unique audience/impressions.

the entire Twitter TV audience for per episode is, on average, 50 times larger than the authors. If, for example, 2,000 people are tweeting about a program, 100,000 people are seeing those Tweets. Those 100,000 aren’t necessarily viewers of that particular TV episode.

Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings are a separate set of metrics to traditional National TV Ratings. They do not change traditional National TV Ratings. But many believe they will complement each other.

recent study conducted by MarketShare suggests that TV ads are more effective when paired with paid Twitter advertising than without.

Nevertheless, advertisers in the US are seeing more ROI from their Twitter efforts, and 1 in 5 are now using Twitter in conjunction with a TV campaign, according to recent survey results from Ad Age.

Overall, 17.2 million unique authors sent tweets about TV during the study period, while 7.6 million tweeted about brands. The overlap results in 5.5 million people tweeting about both brands and TV. Among those 5.5 million, the most commonly tweeted brand categories were: consumer electronics (74%); restaurants (48%); food (29%); beverages (27%); and automotive (24%).

Up until now when users click on a hashtag, they are shown a page littered with tweets which have included that particular hashtag. But in Nascar’s case, Twitter will curate those tweets through an algorithm, and by hand to give users a behind-the-scenes look at the race.

consumers who click on the #Nascar hashtag will be directed to a not-yet-live Twitter page that will aggregate tweets and photos related to the race to create what Nascar svp and CMO Steve Phelps called in a statement a “complementary live race experience.”

The app takes an aggressive approach, blocking any tweet with the words “breaking” or “bad,” even if they may have nothing to do with the show, or are merely innocent comments on the show’s Emmy win. However, for those who have to wait to watch the finale, it may be better to be safe than sorry.

“Bad” fans can log into the website through Twitter and view a relatively normal version of their timeline, the only change being that tweets that could contain spoilers are blacked out with a spoiler warning. They have the option of clicking on the tweet to view it, if they so dare.

Twitter's 49.2 million U.S. users generally skew younger and are disproportionately in cities, for example, according to marketers and media analysts.

marketers see potential value in knowing which shows have Twitter enthusiasts. For some, it is becoming a factor when they purchase TV time: The theory is that if fans are engaged on Twitter that "means the ads are also being paid attention to,"

The stakes are high for Twitter, which is under the spotlight of an initial public offering of stock and has identified TV-related ad spending as a crucial revenue driver.