Shazam Unveils TV Engagement Metric

App-based music and television identification and sharing service Shazam has launched a new TV metric called the 'Shazam Engagement Rate', which analyses the real-time activity of the firm's user base to provide insights on when and where TV ads resonate most with consumers.

London and Menlo Park-based Shazam, which also has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Sydney and Seoul, connects more than 325 million people in 200+ countries who use the app on smartphones to identify, tag and share music, TV programs and ads. In 2011, the firm raised $32m in venture capital to move beyond its original music focus to TV show and advertisement tagging through the 'Shazam for TV' service.

Developed to enable brands to gauge the effectiveness of these campaigns, the firm's new Engagement Rate metric combines Nielsen's third-party industry data on the number of people viewing a particular ad, with the number of people engaged with that same ad through Shazam. Combining the two sets of data shows which ads are resonating more or less with viewers - with insights available by show, type of show, channel, day of week, day-part mix and other television planning measures.

CEO Rich Riley comments: 'By showing brands where they are seeing actual engagement - not just viewers, but people who are leaning in and asking for more information - Shazam is able to provide an entirely new service to advertisers: measurement and accountability on how effectively an ad campaign connects with the target audience. Advertisers benefit from the direct consumer engagement, and as of today, gain access to insights on the relative performance of their ads airing across television.'

The new service will initially be available to Shazam for TV advertisers in the US.

Web site: www.shazam.com .