The Walt Disney Company led all companies in Shareablee’s U.S. Media 100 Index measuring social media interactions.
According to the firm’s numbers for May, Disney chalked up 327.6 million consumer interactions, making up 10.5% of total engagement within the media industry in the U.S. The results showed that Disney also logged 33% growth in content shares and 22% growth in video views.
21st Century Fox came in second with 300.7 million interactions, and Turner Digital ranked third overall with 248.8 million interactions.
Group Nine Media—which last year scored an investment from Discovery Communications—led with 2.9 billion video views (9.6% of the industry's total views) and BuzzFeed's Tasty and Nifty videos followed with 2.4 billion views.
Among the social leaders for cable companies were ESPN (157.8 million actions), Fox News (58.2 million actions) and CNN (46.8 million actions). For broadcast networks, the top three were ABC (79.4 million actions), NBC (62.3 million actions) and Telemundo (40.1 million actions).
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Broadcasters like NBC have raced to embrace social and digital platforms as a means of expanding audiences outside of the traditional television ecosystem. At the NAB show earlier this year, NBC Entertainment Chair Bob Greenblatt stressed the importance of embracing those platforms.
Speaking at the show with Nerdist CEO Chris Hardwick, Greenblatt said that ratings won’t matter if broadcasters can monetize elsewhere and allow social and digital to become one with what they’re doing.
“Anywhere we can get a viewer or market to a new set of eyeballs, we should,” Greenblatt said.
That extends to local broadcasters as well. Earlier this year, BIA/Kelsey and Share Rocket announced an agreement to help provide social media ratings for local TV stations.
“Broadcasters are intent on monetizing the value of their social audiences, especially as consumers turn to multiple channels and devices to consume content,” said Rick Ducey, managing director at BIA/Kelsey, in a statement. “Our goal in working with Share Rocket is to offer social data to broadcasters that will help them create a social currency around their audiences. We will deliver this information via industry 'how to' papers and within our own software products that industry professionals use daily.”