The relationship between television and social media has become more relevant -- and more important. Networks and specific TV shows are consistently pushing personal handles and hashtags to encourage engagement with their content. Some even launch fun contests and entice viewers to submit their own UGC (user generated content) through carefully thought-out integrations or during commercial breaks.

But how does one go about measuring the actual content being generated on social media and its direct impact as a result of television show, advertising and more?

Earlier this month, Facebook joined Twitter in the real-time news space as they announced that a select few news organizations, like CNN and Buzzfeed, would be allowed access to real-time public posts for an exact keyword and reports of the gender, age and location of those users engaging.

Most recently, Facebook began sending weekly metrics to four large TV networks, including ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, as well as a few "select partners" according to The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog. Specifically speaking, the reports will stay private but will divulge in actions that take place on social media platforms during TV episodes (likes, comments and shares). On top of this, numbers will be calculated relating to how many Facebook users were behind such actions. Having these numbers will help networks get a better understand of what content is working with viewers and what is not, thus developing more highly integrated digital marketing strategies into the overall plan.

Although Facebook's new APIs are somewhat limited, experts believe that it will demonstrate how this social media giant is trying to set itself apart from its rival, Twitter, by placing more of an importance on its large fan base.

Daniel Slotwiner, the lead of Facebook’s measurement team says, “The conversation is being generated by a group that is much more representative of the general population– that means we should have a better signal as it relates to ratings."

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FOLLOW UP: Do you think data provided by Facebook will actually help TV networks?

-- Samantha

We had recently done a piece on how Facebook is getting ready to sell video advertisements on their platform. In order to create some hype among advertisers, Facebook released some recent user data for the U.S. and UK. Get ready for this:

More than 128 million people in the U.S. visit Facebook at least once a day. That's a third of the population! Also, in the UK, about 24 million people visit the social media website everyday.

Of course these numbers are pretty staggering on their own, but another important thing to take away from this announcement, is that this is one of the first times Facebook has released regional data. This is significant to TV advertisers, who rely heavily on those breakdowns. Facebook is trying to show all the advertisers out there just how many people they can reach on a daily basis.

At $66.3 billion estimated to go towards TV ads this year, or 39% of all advertising spent in the U.S., there is some serious money to be made by Facebook. Although these daily user number are no doubt impressive, advertising analysts would like to see more granularity before they can really put a value on Facebook's reach. For the first time ever, researchers say the average time spent on digital media will surpass TV viewing this year.

We can all see where TV advertising is going and it is no surprise that Facebook is on the forefront. Sure there will be some backlash from user over having video ads in their newsfeed, but after seeing the potential revenues for Facebook in this new field, we expect to see them take TV advertising head-on.

-Mike & Samantha