trueAnthem, the industry leader in earned media intelligence for advertisers, content publishers and digital marketers, and Fox Broadcasting Company (FOX) today announced they have received the 2012 Next Gen Market Research (NGMR) Innovation Award for their collaboration in social media measurement. Next Gen Market Research (NGMR), the premier online networking group for market research, information services and insights professionals, honored trueAnthem and FOX with the award at IIR USA’s 2012 The Market Research Event (TMRE) in Boca Raton, Fla. earlier this week.

The NGMR Innovation Award recognizes companies and individuals that have demonstrated outstanding leadership as change agents and made significant contributions to harnessing disruptive innovation to drive research industry progress. The Innovation Award for social media measurement was given to trueAnthem and FOX for their joint efforts in developing and testing new social media key performance indicators (KPIs) that can potentially serve as industry standard measurement metrics.

“While the concept of earned media and influencers are not new to our industry, instantaneous measurement of social interactions and the ‘right’ way to define social KPIs have largely been in a pioneering phase,” said Melva Benoit, senior vice president of audience innovation, research and strategy at Fox Broadcasting Company. “Together, FOX and trueAnthem are proud to offer a proven method for measuring earned media that the industry can consider as we move into the future.”

“Our goal has always been to provide the intelligence inside the share button within social media experiences,” said Chris Hart, CEO of trueAnthem. “Partnering with FOX gave us the opportunity to prove the value of that patent-pending technology. We’re excited to be receiving recognition for our collaboration with FOX and to help the industry move forward with a meaningful way to measure the impact of social media marketing.”

FOX partnered with trueAnthem to track social sharing, quantify the value of earned media and identify social influencers for several of its television series this year. trueAnthem upgraded FOX’s existing share functionality with its patent-pending technology to identify social influencers and track multi-generational sharing of paid, owned and earned media as well as other metrics to help FOX evaluate content creation efforts and better monetize advertising. Through earned media measurement and tracking, FOX was able to show that viewers are actively sharing content, and that these shares generated value beyond that which traditional online metrics report. Through trueAnthem’s technology, FOX learned that the content engagement rate was significantly higher (by 15%) amongst its new earned audience and that on average a share resulted in 15X new video impressions. As a result, the social distribution of content and advocacy generated amongst all of FOXs viewers not only drove earned media impressions, but aided in the acquisition of valuable new viewers.

“I believe the whole industry should be rethinking the marketing and advertising models as these channels evolve and our knowledge of how people think and feel grows,” said Mike Gadd, NGMR Board of Advisors and President of Gadd Research, Canada. “Companies are starting to sit up and recognize the need to partner with market research firms to help define the most relevant KPIs. Innovators like trueAnthem and companies like FOX are helping us set the best standards for the rest of the industry.”

For more information about NGMR’s Innovation Award and IIR USA’s The Market Research Event, please visit: http://www.iirusa.com/research/event-home.xml. For more information about trueAnthem’s earned media measurement capabilities, please visit: http://trueanthem.com/earnedMedia.html

About trueAnthem

trueAnthem (www.trueanthem.com) is the industry leader in earned media intelligence for advertisers, content publishers and digital marketers. Our patent-pending Social Genome and trueInsights Share PlugIn technology tracks digital content across paid, owned and earned media placement, identifies social influencers and reports on the value of earned media. We provide over 30 core metrics to help assess the performance, quality and social success of digital content, which help clients evaluate and optimize that content to generate earned media and engage new audience through share technology. Founded in 2010, trueAnthem is a privately-held company based in San Francisco.

About Fox Broadcasting Company

Fox Broadcasting Company is a unit of News Corporation and the leading broadcast television network among Adults 18-49. FOX finished the 2010-2011 season at No. 1 in the key adult demographic for the seventh consecutive year – a feat that has never been achieved in broadcast history – while continuing to dominate all network competition in the more targeted Adults 18-34 and Teen demographics. FOX airs 15 hours of primetime programming a week as well as late-night entertainment programming, major sports and Sunday morning news.

About Next Gen Market Research (NGMR)

Next Gen Market Research (NGMR) is an independent, non-profit professional networking group for market research practitioners who are interested in exploring innovative, emerging market research techniques and technologies. Originally founded as a discussion forum on the LinkedIn network in September 2007, NGMR’s membership now exceeds 19,500 market researchers worldwide (clients and suppliers) and is the most active online community in the field. For further information, please visit the NGMR website or blog at www.nextgenmr.com and www.tomhcanderson.com or join our group on LinkedIn.