Online is, without question, the most measurable and accountable advertising medium. With the more traditional forms of internet marketing, search and display for example, measurement techniques are relatively straightforward and results speak for themselves, leaving very little room for misinterpretation.

All sectors are subject to peer-to-peer recommendation and both negative and positive word-of-mouth activity. Few more so than the movie industry which, as we have seen in the previous chapter, relies heavily on reviews and subjective approval. Online facilitates this to a great extent, from the more formal sites to the wealth of blogs and forums dedicated to film analysis and prerelease buzz.

Measuring this ‘buzz’ is a complicated process, requiring an in-depth analysis and often specialist agencies. However, there are a number of tools and services available to enable the marketer to effectively evaluate their internet marketing campaigns, and gauge consumer feedback throughout. Identifying your campaign objectives at the very start may appear to be simple and common-sensical advice, but is fundamental in order to ascertain exactly how you will measure its success. Through doing this, you will ensure that the data you receive is highly relevant and useful, whilst not being swamped with insignificant statistics. As Scott Gallacher from BSkyB noted during the roundtable discussion: “The problem with online is that we have tons of data that we just don’t use. We are buried in numbers but we are devoid of insight.”

Of course, it is possible to conduct your own small-scale research on a movie’s buzz, simply by exploring the internet. Sites such as Technorati – the blog search engine – can accurately inform you to what extent your product is being discussed online, in fact the site even has its own section dedicated to film http://www.technorati.com/entertainment/film/. At the time of writing for example, a Technorati search for the newly released film ‘Horton Hears a Who’ revealed 1,112 blogs which had referenced the movie, whilst also providing a graph detailing the mentions by day (see below).


Tools such as this, Google blog search ( http://www.google.co.uk/blogsearch and www. blogsearchengine.com are undoubtedly essential for an up-to-the-minute analysis of a film’s reception. Furthermore one must not forget search engines in general, which can often serve as a reputation management tool as well as a convenient place to access information and opinion. Microsoft adCenter for example, allows you to discover who is searching for relevant terms by demographic information such as gender and age. An example is provided below, using the phrase ‘James Bond Quantum of Solace’.



In addition, if you have established a presence on a more formal social site, such as MySpace, Facebook or Bebo – amongst others - you are able to qualitatively examine the response to a film throughout a campaign, based on indicators such as friend/fan count and comments left on these properties. The MySpace page for the film Juno is a good example of this - www.myspace.com/junothemovie.

At the end of March 2008 the film’s official page had a total of 23,598 friends, and 855 comments had been left as well as 50 forum discussions. Such hands-on interaction and instant feedback is unquestionably a godsend for film advertisers, who are able to instantly gauge the general feeling towards their product at any given time. Of course, layouts of such social networking sites vary, and the majority will offer bespoke advertising packages relevant to your communications strategies and target audiences, and in turn provide the measurement tools and statistics that are most relevant to you.

Those processes referenced above are, in the main, quick and easy methods of measuring talkability and buzz. However in the past few years more in-depth research has been conducted in order to examine the correlation between online commentary and movie sales. A white paper produced by global research company Nielsen BuzzMetrics (2005) analysed sentiment amongst the blogging community towards a number of films in the run-up to their opening weekend, and the impact this had towards movie sales. So, rather than simply acknowledging references towards films in terms of quantity, quality was the main focus of the exercise, in terms of whether blog posts where positive, negative or indifferent. The study found that: “…In the domain of movies, there is a good correlation between references to movies in weblog posts – both before and after their release – and the movie’s financial success” and that “the number of positive references correlates better than raw counts in the pre-release period.”

Therefore, whilst quantitative methodologies can provide information on the scale and extent to which your movie is being talked about, it may also be necessary to delve even deeper to measure the success of marketing campaigns, as well as any word-of-mouth activity that may have occurred ‘naturally’. Some entertainment brands have adopted these methods already, as Scott Gallacher from BSkyB states: “We track volumes as well as positive and negative commentary… We speak to the product team and get them to track for positive/negative discussions. It is complicated, but the only way we have found to simplify it.” Within this realm it can also be the role of organisations such as Nielsen BuzzMetrics to conduct such research for you, delivering insights on what they call Consumer-Generated Media (CGM) to identify the impact of internet discussion and buzz on brand perception. Again, it is essential when first planning your campaign to decide exactly what areas you wish to focus on, in order to receive the most relevant results.

Increasingly individual agencies are also developing their own bespoke measurement tools, which better enable film marketers to understand the impact of talkability early on in a campaign. Digital marketing company iCrossing for example, offers a full social media audit based upon the widespread conversations about a brand or product that take place across online communities.

These new metrics may at first appear to be overwhelming given the sheer size of the online space, however moving forward there is an essential need to comprehend the impact of talkability on communications strategies and movie sales. It is the role of both a brand and its agency to work together to not only quantify, but analyse this data received, and even respond where appropriate. It should also be noted that with the advent of online, campaigns no longer have a set lifetime, and films – perhaps more than many other product categories – will be discussed via the internet indefinitely, therefore such measurement should be ongoing.


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