This week at the Banff World Media Festival, Seevibes launched its social TV ratings service, allowing anyone to access data for Canadian TV shows that are calculated by way of analyzing social media conversation.

Laurent Maisonnave, founder, Seevibes, tells MiC that the social metrics company looks at mentions of 1,005 shows in Canada. Conversation can include the show’s name as well as those of its cast, he says, adding that over the past six months it has seen Twitter and Facebook exchanges from 700,000 Canadians across the country.

“We track one million interactions per day,” he notes. “And week after week, we can see who is coming back to talk about a TV show.”

Seevibes is currently working with broadcasters including Astral and TVA Group to help monetize social media, says Maisonnave.

“They see a lot of traction and engagement, but do not know how to monetize [it]. We’re aiding them in doing that by providing relevant data of the experience,” he adds, saying that the broadcasters use the ratings to better optimize their TV programming (by looking at what viewers think of a show) as well as a “platform to negotiate the value of a social audience” with advertisers.

It does not replace TV viewership ratings, he says, but it aims to give credence to the use of social media integration, such as a hashtag Twitter contest, within shows.

This may not be a new method of analyzing audience data, Networked Insights in the U.S. is conducting similar social media calculations. However, Seevibes is dedicated to looking at a broad scope of programming in Canada to provide an everyday market share, similar to BBM but through social media chatter, he adds.

Here is a list of the top 10 Canadian TV shows by mentions on Facebook and Twitter, as compiled by Seevibes: