Bluefin Tech to Analyze Social Media Response

Tech company Bluefin Labs has unveiled a technology to discover and analyze what people say via social media about the shows and ads they watch on television in real time.

The technology, currently in pilot with different brands, agencies and media companies, lets marketers see audience response to mass media, providing insight to develop measurably more targeted and responsive campaigns, says the company.

As marketers are increasingly adopting social media platforms to promote their brands, a slew of companies are offering their solutions to help them leverage social media effectively.

Stockopedia, a social media site for UK stock market investors, has launched its Publisher Analytics platform. It allows third party publishers and bloggers on the site to measure readership and engagement for their content on a real-time basis. (Read: Social Media Investing Site Adds Analytics Feature)

And digital marketing agency Overdrive Interactive has launched SocialEye, a tracking and measurement dashboard designed to reveal the ROI of social media marketing. (Read: How to Measure ROI on Social Media Marketing)

There are dedicated solutions for microblogging sites. Launched by the global public relations firm LEWIS PR, Chatterscope automatically tracks and alerts organisations about negative and positive Twitter conversations mentioning their brands. (Read: Are Twitter Tweets Okay with Your Brand?)

While all this aggressive activity is happening, it is believed that social media is an extremely tricky ballgame, which can be more harmful than helpful for your brand objectives if your product promotion and messaging approach is wrong.

Online marketers believe that currently over 500 million global consumers are connected with various social media sites. And they can be potential buyers for different brands. However, there’s a marked difference between the rhetoric and reality. Social media isn’t helpful in most cases. Why? (Read: 10 Reasons Why Social Media Doesn’t Help)

Bluefin recently closed a $6M round of Series-A funding led by Redpoint Ventures and has been growing steadily since its inception in 2008, it said.

“A chasm is growing between mass media, where brands spend hundreds of billions each year to reach large audiences, and social media, where audiences share response and shape public opinion at lightning speeds. Unless companies learn how to integrate social media response tightly with their mass media marketing, they risk losing control of their brands,” said Bluefin founder and CEO Deb Roy.

“Bluefin’s platform radically reduces the cost and complexity of mapping social chatter to TV content in real time and at scale.”

The announcement was made Wednesday, Feb. 2.

Bluefin Labs is a technology company dedicated to helping brands, agencies, and media companies optimize their mass media performance by integrating real time insights mined from social media and other sources of audience response.

It was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Cambridge, MA.