Over the past two years, the growth in Twitter activity around TV shows has been nothing short of remarkable. Tweets about live TV and the number of Twitter authors talking about TV programming are both increasing in double-digit fashion, steadily broadening the landscape at a record pace.

And with this extraordinary growth has come opportunity. But until now, TV networks, advertisers and agencies haven’t had a way to measure the true impact of this social TV phenomenon. Today, however, the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating provides that comprehensive picture, measuring both Twitter TV-specific activity (authors, Tweets) and reach (unique audience, impressions).

For perspective on the relationship between authors and audience, an initial analysis of Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings reveals that the Twitter TV audience for an episode is, on average, 50 times larger than the authors who are generating Tweets. For example, if 2,000 are Tweeting about a program, 100,000 people are seeing those Tweets. This multiplier varies across programs, with the early data indicating that the ratio of the audience to the authors generally decreases (meaning the multiplier is smaller) as the number of authors sending Tweets about an episode increases. That’s because of the increasing overlap of followers as the number of Twitter authors grows. Comparatively, a single follower is increasingly likely to follow multiple authors.

For additional information, see the press release about the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating or visit SocialGuide.