Twitter released some research yesterday in partnership with Fox that shows how Empire became such a sensation on Twitter. The goal was to see how targeted messaging would motivate audiences to engage on Twitter and the first season of Empire was a good place to start. They separated the audiences intro three groups. An “unexposed group,” who didn’t see anything about Empire, an “earned audience,” those who saw earned tweets, and then the “earned and paid audience,” a subset that saw earned conversations and then were served promo messages. Here’s what they found:
- Higher engagement: The Earned + Paid Audience achieved 23 percent higher engagement rates with re-targeting than the average entertainment (TV) campaign. Media-forward Tweets (those with photo or video) resulted in a 29 percent higher engagement rate than average.
- Impressions “bonus”: Because of the higher engagement rates with paid media (which include Retweet activity), the campaign achieved an additional 24 percent boost in impressions as promoted Tweets drove Retweets (these were additional “free” impressions of the paid media). Overall, the promoted Tweets generated 17.5 million impressions with a bonus of an additional 4.2 million impressions from Re-Tweet activity.
- Driving action: Exposure to earned media had a powerful effect on subsequent actions among Earned Audiences, and this increased substantially when paired with paid media among Earned + Paid audiences. Both groups were more familiar with Empire and likely to Tweet about it more than the Unexposed.
From the Twitter team:
This study indicates that networks and marketers have a head start when they don’t have to pay for the first impression, and the power of a message increases with exposure. This is especially effective when the original view comes from organic and authentic conversation – as opposed to a promoted source, since each type contributes its own distinct value. When earned and paid media are coupled in terms of messaging, together they can drive significant lift in an audience’s intent to act.
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What was so remarkable about Empire is that it was not only popular on social media but people were actually tuning in, appointment viewing. The finale had 16.5 million viewers and drove 2.4 million tweets, according to Nielsen Social. And the marketing team didn’t even have to pay the first impressions. Here are some graphics to wrap your head around:
