Nielsen has launched a new service measuring Twitter TV demographics across 250 US channels.

The service gives Nielsen customers age and demographic info for Twitter users writing about TV and Nielsen said that it has already cast new light on the Twitter and TV audience.

Key findings include that the Twitter/TV audience spans both genders and broad age range although there are significant differences when different categories and genres of programming are measured with Twitter TV authors tweeting on sport 79% male and on reality TV 65% female.

Nielsen found that the Twitter users reading TV tweets was a more balanced demographic than those writing the tweets. Nielsen used the example of a programme where Twitter TV authors are 80% male, but has a Twitter TV Audience that is 60%.

David Shiffman, executive VP of Research, MediaVest. “Metrics like these advance our ability to evaluate and measure the impact of those opportunities and complement our clients’ TV investments with social activation that can improve overall marketing performance.”