Too often, partnerships are chosen based on surface-level metrics like views and engagement. But with social video intelligence, brands can uncover deeper audience interests to discover unexpected collaboration opportunities.

Tubular’s latest research on cross-category partnerships shows how analyzing social media data leads to smarter collaborations. Using social video analytics, we reveal how industries like beauty, gaming, and food can connect in surprising, yet highly effective, ways.

Can’t wait to see the insights? 

Why Traditional Targeting Is So Last Year…

​Traditional audience targeting assumes people fit into neat categories. Beauty lovers only care about makeup, gamers only care about consoles, and foodies only care about recipes. But in reality, audiences are multidimensional.

Social video analytics let brands see:

• What other content categories their audiences watch
  
• Where audience overlap exists between seemingly unrelated topics
  
• How collaborations impact audience expansion and engagement
  

For example, when we looked at topics YouTube Beauty viewers in the UK were also interested in, we saw some obvious overlap with Fashion and Jewelry, and some not-so-obvious overlap with Racing and Motorsports. 

Beauty Meets Motorsports

Charlotte Tilbury x Formula 1 Academy

At first glance, Beauty and Motorsports might seem worlds apart. But Tubular’s data found that UK female Beauty viewers are 11.4x more likely to watch Motorsports content than the average viewer.

Insights like these can fuel innovative partnership decisions. In fact, Charlotte Tilbury became the first beauty brand to partner with the Formula 1 Academy. And the campaign didn’t just make history — it was a runaway success:

• 9.6M TikTok views from user-generated content (UGC)
  
• 852K engagements across official and fan posts
• +97% increase in audience overlap between Beauty and F1 content year-over-year
  

Key Takeaway: Bold partnerships expand reach and unlock new audience segments.

Gaming Meets Glamour

Riot Games x Fenty Beauty

Female gamers are a growing but under-served audience. Tubular’s analytics showed strong affinities between women in gaming and major beauty brands like YSL, NYX, and L’Oréal.

Riot Games capitalized on this by partnering with Fenty Beauty on a limited-edition makeup collection inspired by its hit series Arcane. The colab went viral:

• 59M TikTok views in UGC
  
• 1.6M Instagram engagements
  
• A surge of beauty tutorials, cosplay, and swatch content that blurred the lines between gaming and beauty culture

Key Takeaway: Partnerships thrive when audiences are invited to participate, not just consume.

Bonus Research

Food Meets Nostalgic Entertainment

What happens when you merge cookware with entertainment nostalgia? You get one of the most viral cross-category collaborations of the year.

We break down the full story in our latest report — including how a cookware brand leveraged a beloved pop culture franchise to drive millions of unexpected views and engagements.

How to Identify the Best Influencer or Brand Partnerships

So, how can brands apply these insights? Here’s a step-by-step framework:

1. Analyze audience affinities – Use social media analytics to uncover what else your target audience watches and engages with.
   
2. Look for the unexpected – Viral impact comes from partnerships outside of your category.
   
3. Validate with data – Track audience overlap and engagement growth to prove the partnership’s value.
   
4. Enable co-creation – Encourage UGC with interactive content so audiences fuel the campaign’s momentum.
   

With the right social video intelligence, marketers don’t need to guess. They can see where unexpected partnerships will thrive — and confidently invest in collaborations that deliver measurable results.

Want to discover unexpected partnership opportunities for your brand?
Request a demo today.

The post How to Identify the Best Partnerships with Social Video Intelligence appeared first on Tubular Labs.

Fortunately, Tubular recently launched summary panels in Viewpoint that automatically contextualize data from the social video universe. The panels bring key insights front and center to help you quickly understand what’s driving performance, spot trends, and decide your next content move.

Today, we’re giving you an inside look into the Tubular Viewpoint product, some of the people on our team who helped build it, and how summary panels are transforming dispersed data into actionable insights.

But First, What’s Viewpoint?

​Viewpoint is Tubular’s intuitive social video analytics tool, built for busy teams who need instant takeaways and inspiration. Beginner-friendly analytics, clean dashboards, and competitive insights empower teams to spend less time digging through data and more time acting on it.

With Viewpoint, you can:

• Monitor competitive social video performance all in one place: Track views, engagements, uploads, and cross-platform performance over the past 90 days
• Discover content opportunities: See which Topics are gaining traction and identify top-performing content across platforms for inspiration
• Understand your audience: Explore demographics, engagement, and relevant Creators, Video Categories, and Topics to inform creative decisions
• Benchmark against competitors: Compare recent views, engagements, and growth for any Creator, and chart their performance as often as you need

New to Viewpoint?
Watch our on-demand Viewpoint webinar and see the contextual insights panels in action.

Contextual Insights in the Bigger Picture of Tubular Analytics 

For teams working in fast-paced environments, data hunting can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. But with contextual insights panels, users get the data they need in an instant.

These side panels in Viewpoint help surface relevant trends, performance snapshots, and related opportunities alongside the content or metrics you’re analyzing – helping you remove unnecessary steps and cognitive overload. 

A Single Place for Clear, Quick Takeaways

“Before the contextual insights panels, there wasn’t a single, clear place to get condensed information on key entities like Topics,” Erkin Polat, Senior Software Engineer at Tubular, explained. “The data existed across the app, but it wasn’t easy for users to pull together quickly.”

The team set out to fix that by embedding this feedback directly into the platform, eliminating the need to click away from the page users are working in. Instead of building custom dashboards or advanced queries, users can now access high-level trends and recent performance with a single click.

What Insights Do the Panels Provide?

• Quick performance snapshots on Topics and Creators across social platforms
• Top contributing videos driving trends without the need to create custom search dashboards
• More detailed analysis with the ability to click into related parts of the Tubular platform
• Deeper insights and context, making it easier to understand what’s driving trends

This means you can spot spikes in engagement, drops in views, or emerging trends without friction, which is perfect for teams that need to make data-driven decisions on the fly.

Building the Panels: Technical Opportunities and Frameworks

While Viewpoint panels use Tubular’s existing data sources, building them was not plug-and-play.

Tubular’s data queries are deep and resource-intensive, so the Engineering team balanced the capability to perform in-depth data pulls with an easy-to-use interface.

The Data Signals Behind the Scenes

What powers the panels?

• Recent performance trends show how performance changes over time
• Audience Also Watches surfaces related audience interests for deeper discovery
• Integration with other Tubular products makes the panels feel seamless across data workflows
• The same robust data that powers Tubular: 15B videos, 45M Creators, 1M Categories and Topics all presented in easy-to-understand summaries

What’s Next? Tubular’s Vision for Contextual Insights

Viewpoint and its contextual insights panels are just the beginning of Tubular’s efforts to provide direct content strategy takeaways based on social video data. 

Our Engineering team is also exploring ways to embed contextual summarization capabilities deeper within the platform, working to enhance other areas of the user experience and streamline data workflows even further:

Ultimately, the long-term vision is to bring contextual insights panels to every corner of Tubular where social video data lives — whether for panels, Creators, Topics, or campaign reports. The more places users can see insights in context, the more seamless and impactful their workflows become.

Why Contextual Insights Matter for Tubular Users

Embedding contextual insights panels directly into workflows in Tubular reduces cognitive load and makes data easier to act on.

“It’s good to be able to say to my team, ‘all of this data is in one place and it’s consistently presented.’ Each platform prioritizes different metrics or measures success in different ways, and this allows my team to focus on the data they care about and measure success all in one place.” Glenn Freeman, Editor-in-Chief at The Race and Viewpoint User

Contextual insights panels aren’t about adding more data — they’re about highlighting what matters most when you need it, so you can move faster in a rapidly shifting social video landscape.

This is one more way Tubular is delivering on its mission: helping customers make sense of the social video universe — and take action confidently.

Want to see how the contextual insights panels work?
Request a demo or reach out to your Customer Success Manager to learn how to get the most out of these new insights.

The post Social Video Data: Move Faster with Contextual Insights appeared first on Tubular Labs.

In our latest report, The State of Social 2024, we noticed four major trends publishers need to know about. 

The first trend we covered was how media & news publishers are growing on social sites. 

The second stop on our State of Social 2024 journey explores how social media audiences are cross-pollinating and becoming more permeable. This new trend opens up opportunities for publishers and advertisers to widen their horizons and reach new demographics. 

Social media creators understand that modern social audiences have many evolving interests. So when a beauty influencer also posts fitness content, it’s likely to resonate with a good portion of their ‘beauty audience’. 

Multifaceted audiences are highly valuable to marketers because they can reach their target demo while also expanding beyond it. 

Let’s look at some of the most successful category cross-pollination we’ve seen so far. 

---

Sports media leverages pop-culture power couples

It’s impossible to discuss cross-over audiences without mentioning Taylor Swift and her relationship with 2024 Super Bowl winner, Travis Kelce. When the singer wasn’t gracing the stage of her Eras Tour, she was shown on the NFL big screen attending Kansas City Chiefs games. Seemingly overnight, the NFL won a massive Swiftie following.

From December 2023 to January 2024, Swift’s Instagram audience overlap with the NFL grew by 5x.

As the football season progressed, NFL social channels featured more and more celebrity girlfriends and wives to appeal to their growing female audience. TikTok beauty influencer Alix Earle was featured with her Miami Dolphins boyfriend, Braxton Berrios, across NFL’s social channels throughout the 2023-2024 season. Tubular’s social video insights found that content about Earle and the NFL reached 150+ million cross-platform views in the past year and she was even invited to present an award at the NFL Honors.

Here’s an example of how the NFL featured athletes’ wives and girlfriends in order to appeal to a female audience — the comments speak for themselves!

@nfl

put @alix earle in coach! #alixearle #nflman #miamidolphins #nfl

♬ 1901 – Phoenix

---

The New York Times wins engagements with The Athletic

The New York Times embraced social media by acquiring The Athletic in 2022, fully integrating it in July 2023. While acquisitions always involve some risk, this strategic business decision successfully brought social audiences and sports lovers under the NYT umbrella.

As of February 2023, Sports was The New York Times’ number one video category on TikTok for views & engagements per video over the last 365 days, far above News & Politics. 

NewYork Times TikTok Engagements per Video by Category

NPR embraces modern music audiences with Tiny Desk Series

National Public Radio is the non-profit broadcaster created in 1970. Today, the media brand produces and distributes news and cultural programming. While the company began as a radio broadcast reaching thousands of local stations, they are now embracing the Social Media Era in innovative yet authentic ways. 

That’s where NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts come in…

The musical series originated in 2008 and captivates younger audiences on YouTube by featuring today’s most popular artists like Alicia Keys, Mac Miller, and Leon Bridges.

What sets this series apart from others is that it features musicians in an acoustic set against a barebones stage (literally behind a tiny desk). The simple stage leaves viewers with the feeling that they’ve gotten a glimpse behind the curtain to see one of their favorite musicians beyond all the production and editing. Check out pop star Justin Timberlake rocking the Tiny Desk set for over 25 minutes:

While NPR’s YouTube audience is mostly 55+, NPR Music (which hosts Tiny Desk) has a much younger audience.

Tubular data can also see the behavioral differences between these older & younger audiences using our Consumer Insights tool. What different products and search terms are these audiences searching for? 

NPR’s social audience is 41x more likely to shop for Teeth Guards on Amazon than the average social audience. Meanwhile, Venmo and Doordash are popular search terms for Tiny Desk Concert viewers which means they’re la digital native audience. 

By understanding audience interests, publishers can win more brand partnerships and create content that resonates.

Audiences are comprised of dynamic viewers with multifaceted interests and unique behaviors. In 2024, creators and publishers are harnessing the power of cross-over audiences and similar topics.

Media publishers should provide a wide range of content to cater to diverse preferences. Using Tubular’s Audience Also Watches tool can help you find out what else your target demographics are interested in. This way, when you dip your toes into new video categories, you can anticipate success. 

Next up from The State of Social 2024: 

• Part 1: Commercial Media Takes Social by Storm
• Part 2: Meet the Multifaceted Viewer
• Part 3: Content Strategy & Platform Diversification
• Part 4: Influencers Integrating with Commercial Media

To get the full State of Social 2024 report instantly, click below.

The post 2024 Trends: Meet the Multifaceted Viewer appeared first on Tubular Labs.

“With Tubular data, we were able to find adjacent audience, which we otherwise would have guessed on.”

Allie Sakakibara, Associate Director, Head of Content

Discovery Japan, a powerhouse in real-life entertainment, has captivated audiences worldwide with its inspiring and informative content. By exploring the intersection of televised programs and social content, the global Discovery network has transcended across continents, cultures, and channels. 

Allie Sakakibara, Associate Director and Head of Content at Discovery Japan, shares how they leverage YouTube to complement traditional media strategies.

Challenge

Content Length Optimization 

Initially, the Discovery Japan team grappled with determining the optimal content length for their YouTube channel. Despite consistent efforts with short-form content, breakthrough success eluded them. The team knew they needed to test out longer content that could be repurposed from television shows— but striking the perfect balance would not be easy.

Content Diversification

Following the initial success of their hit show “Marooned,” the Discovery Japan YouTube channel inadvertently became pigeonholed as a survival-themed channel. This posed the challenge of diversifying content to reach a broader audience without losing engagement.

“Discovery Channel Japan was known as a survival channel, which was great because we had really narrowed our niche, but it was also a bad thing because we couldn’t do anything else. So on Tubular, we were able to understand, what other content are our audience also watching? What other content in our Discovery library would our audience also like?”

-Allie Sakakibara, Associate Director, Head of Content

Action

Flexible Content Strategy

Embracing flexibility, the team experimented with content lengths until they struck gold with the longer-form “Marooned” series,  an original Discovery show with a 44-minute runtime. Sakakibara noted there was hesitancy to embrace long-form content, as it was important to also maintain the integrity of Discovery’s televised shows. The team reached a compromise by editing multiple episodes into long-form social media content.

“The video that went viral was uploaded on September 26, 2018. And as you can see, it currently has 5.4 million views [as of March 2021]. This video really put us on the map. So it was a very short period of about one month until we went from virtually no views to really making that first hit content.”

-Allie Sakakibara, Associate Director, Head of Content

Audience Analysis with Tubular Data

Leveraging Tubular data, Discovery Japan gained insights into audience preferences and interests beyond survival content. This led to the creation of diverse content spanning topics like ghost hunting, fishing, travel, food, and more.

“In our Tubular Labs dashboard, you can see Audience Also Watches Creators and Videos. I was able to pinpoint three huge YouTube creators that had a very similar audience to us. One of them was a very popular food and fishing channel. So we took a gamble and put a food channel show on, which has nothing to do with survival, but people loved it. With Tubular data, we were able to find adjacent audiences, which we otherwise would have just guessed on.”

-Allie Sakakibara, Associate Director, Head of Content

Growth

Diversification and Audience Expansion 

By diversifying content and catering to broader interests, Discovery Japan expanded its audience base. The success of “Marooned” paved the way for the channel’s transformation into a hub for diverse content, attracting viewers interested in various topics beyond survival.

• In February of 2024, Discovery Japan was the #3 Japanese creator on Facebook in Science & Tech 
• In the past 365 days, the channel’s top 6 videos were all YouTube #shorts, allowing them to reach new viewers
• 90% of their YouTube audience also watches videos about Humor, and 70% also watches videos about Film

Discovery Japan’s journey exemplifies the power of adaptability and testing out different strategies. Making data-informed decisions can empower creators to take strategic risks. By embracing experimentation, leveraging data insights, and leaning into niche content, Discovery Japan has solidified its position as a leader in captivating audiences on YouTube, Facebook, and more. 

Download the full webinar to watch on-demand here: Growing Audiences on YouTube with Discovery Japan

The post Discovery Japan leverages niche content for rapid growth appeared first on Tubular Labs.

Did you know about half of the world’s population will vote in an election in 2024?

With elections across countries big and small like the US, India, Uruguay, and Lithuania, national elections will require comprehensive coverage across news sites and social media.

We’ll be pairing Tubular’s social media insights with Chartbeat’s on-site analytics to paint a 360-degree view of the evolving political landscape leading up to this fall’s US Presidential Election and others around the world. 

To kick things off, we’ll catch up on the Republican primaries and look ahead to the general election. It’s safe to say that we have solidified party candidates, and unless Biden or Trump unexpectedly drops out for health problems or legal qualms between now and November— we’ve got a rematch on our hands.

Sign up for our newsletter here so you don’t miss the next update.

---

A Look Back at the Primaries

Despite the early promise of Ron DeSantis and the fortitude of Nikki Haley, when we compare the candidates by Engaged Time on sites in the Chartbeat network, Donald Trump dominated audience attention.

Even after Trump declined to attend the first Republican debate in August 2023, the former president still earned more on-site engagement than DeSantis or Haley. On average, Trump earned 5X the daily engagement of DeSantis and 22X the daily engagement of Haley.

YouTube viewership during the Republican primaries

Tubular’s social video insights tell a similar story…

Over the last six months, Trump videos received tens of millions more views than videos related to Haley and DeSantis. While viewership does not equate to votes, it’s clear that Trump had an insurmountable attention advantage.

Comparing this year’s primaries to 2020

As the results of the Republican nomination became clearer, on-site audiences actually read more articles related to elections than they did during the same early primary cycle in 2020. Not only have page views remained higher than the last election, but they have grown with each successive race, starting in Iowa (days 1-7 on the graph above), growing in New Hampshire (days 8-14), and finally crescendoing on Super Tuesday (days 15-21). 

2020 followed a similar, if smaller, pattern, but it’s worth noting that the primaries were still competitive at that point in the election cycle. On this year’s Super Tuesday, Nikki Haley was still in the race, but it was a matter of when and not if she would concede the nomination to Trump. 

---

A Bird’s Eye View of Today’s General Election Battleground

While Trump blew away Republican challengers on site and social, how does he stack up to Biden as we turn our attention to the general election? 

Incumbents typically garner much more attention than their opponents, but as we know, Trump is no ordinary candidate as a former president with a knack for attention-grabbing headlines and controversy. 

If we look back to 2020, then incumbent Donald Trump was getting more than 5X the on-site engagement of Biden.

This election, between August 2023 and March 2024, Biden-related articles received a daily average of 272,000 hours of Engaged Time while Trump-related articles averaged about 220,000 hours. This is much closer than the engagement advantage Trump maintained while running for reelection in 2020. 

While Biden has had higher highs in terms of on-site engagement, particularly in October following the Hamas attack in Israel, Trump has also had his engaging days on site, often as a result of his legal escapades.

For example, Trump saw a major spike in August of 2023 when he surrendered himself to the Fulton County Jail for charges related to an alleged scheme to overturn the election in Georgia. Upon his release, he fanned the social flames by tweeting his mugshot on X, his first tweet since his account was suspended during the insurrection at the Capitol in 2021. 

Trump vs. Biden, the social story.

In the realm of social media, Trump outperforms Biden across platforms. On only three occasions in the past six months has election-related YouTube content about Biden approached or surpassed Trump content.

Tubular found that over the past 6 months…

• Trump has won almost 2X as many YouTube views as Biden
• Facebook has a more even margin with Trump taking 53.3% of views to Biden’s 46.6%
• On TikTok, the Trump/Biden split is 60/40

Misinformation on social

With any social platform, we have to be wary of unregulated media and misinformation, especially with the proliferation of AI in the past year. 

For example, in August 2023, the most viewed TikTok content about the US presidential election had over 13 million views and 1 million engagements and featured Trump being frantically arrested by police. While the carousel of images looks eerily real, it was actually created by AI.

It’s vital that trusted media publishers establish a strong presence on newer social platforms as a source of truth for young Millennial and Gen Z voters.

Social Media Demographics

Looking at those who are viewing Trump and Biden election content, Tubular identified the largest age demographic is 55+, making up 41% of all Facebook viewership. What’s interesting is that the male audience of 45-54-year-olds is actually smaller than the audience of 25-34 and 35-44-year-olds on this platform.

When we look at those watching US presidential election content about Trump and Biden on YouTube, it’s even more male-dominated than Facebook’s. On YouTube, men make up about 77% of all US presidential viewership.

This insight reveals an opportunity for campaigners to target the untapped female audiences on YouTube.

---

Topics & Trends Engaging Voters

In the digital age, social media platforms have become election battlegrounds where political narratives are forged, debated, and discussed. While views don’t equal votes, they do give us an idea of the topics that actually influence voters. 

For both candidates, Tubular data reveals interesting insights about what their social audience cares about. In the chart below, you can see some of the hot topics watched by each candidate’s YouTube account audience.

Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump’s Owned YouTube Channels  

*This is not election-specific content

Below, we used Tubular to explore key election topics that are likely to sway people’s votes such as abortion and immigration. The chart depicts audience affinity on YouTube. The numbers you see indicate the likelihood of Biden or Trump’s owned audience to also watch videos about these election topics.

Trump’s YouTube audience is 49.9x more likely to also watch videos about abortion than other audiences, while Biden’s audience is 38.5x more likely to watch videos about gun control. 

Despite Trump and his attention-grabbing antics winning more views and engagement overall, his YouTube audience is only slightly more active when it comes to these election topics, and Biden’s audience even leads for gun control likely due to his Democratic base’s support of it. 

How are audiences engaging with topics on site?

Our analysis of on-site engagement with popular election issues shows that readers are spending more time with topics like climate change, education, and economic policy than crime, abortion, or immigration. 

While the topic of climate change enjoyed a boost from coverage of the UN Climate Change Conference in November and December, education and economic policy have had a steadier amount of engagement in the last six months. Topics like Crime / Guns, on the other hand, are more influenced by breaking news events like mass shootings.

What’s next

As we prepare for more election milestones, Tubular and Chartbeat will continue to track candidates, audiences, topics, and trends that emerge on news sites and social media.

While this year may feel like a rerun of the same candidates and the same issues, the socioeconomic landscape is vastly different and the nuances within the data will help us navigate the road ahead.

If you’d like to follow along as we analyze election content throughout this year, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to know about our next installment. 

Want to keep up with Tubular’s election coverage? Sign up for our newsletter today.

The post Navigating the Digital Media Maze of the 2024 US Presidential Election appeared first on Tubular Labs.

Expanding Audiences with Nickelodeon 

This year marks the debut of the Big Game being broadcasted on Nickelodeon. The aim was to involve kids and families in the game through animated cameos by SpongeBob and Patrick Starr, slime dripping down the screen upon a touchdown, and Dora the Explorer explaining game rules.

This kid-centric programming presents a fun and interactive approach to educate children about football, using familiar characters and colorful animations. The experience is geared to parents as well as kids, adding a playful twist to the most anticipated game of the year. Overall, the NFL and CBS Sports were putting in the extra effort to nurture an up and coming generation of sports fans.

In the first day of posting, 2 of the Top 10 Most Engaged Videos on social were related to Nickelodeon’s Super Bowl coverage, highlighting its impact on growth in viewership and engagement.

Most Engaged Halftime Videos: Long-Form Form Content Wins Big

Usher’s half time performance owned 3 of the Top 10 Most Engaged Videos within the first 24 hours after posting. 

The #1 Most Engaged Video on social is a lengthy 10 minute video of Usher’s full performance.

The full length video brought in 14.8M views and 1.6M engagements within the first day of posting.

Similar to in 2023 when Rihanna’s performance claimed the top spot as the #1 most engaged video dominating YouTube. Among the remaining two videos in the top 10, both featured clips of Usher’s surprise guest performer, Alicia Keys. In the past, short-form content was king. But splicing longer segments like half-time shows into shorter clips deteriorates the entire story. 

In addition to these musical highlights, other noteworthy clips included Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce at the Super Bowl after party, where they were spotted singing along to Taylor’s songs in the club.

Notably missing from the top engaged social videos? The commercials.

The fact that most engaged videos excluded commercials which are typically very popular suggests a shift in viewer preferences towards more interactive and dynamic content during the Big Game. The focus on live performances and spontaneous moments resonated more strongly with the audiences, eclipsing the traditional allure of coveted Super Bowl commercials.

New Types of Commercials

This year, it costs a cool $6.5-7 million dollars for a 30-second ad slot. While we saw many of the traditional Super Bowl advertisers return to the screen, there were also a few newcomers from the skin care & beauty industry like Cetaphil and e.l.f. which tells us the NFL has a growing female audience.

One of the most viewed Super Bowl commercials might have been originated by a TikTok influencer. 

The battle of brands and influencers. One controversy occurred when a creator claimed that a brand copied her original video and idea. There were several uncanny similarities between the TikTok creator, Sharon Mbabazi, and the Cetaphil commercial. Parallels include that the main characters were a mixed race daughter and a white stepdad, the gifting of a Taylor Swift #13 jersey and the two doing skin care together.  

Certainly, the concept for the commercial was powerful, tapping into the Taylor Swift Effect, skin care, and more. It was a win for the brand— until the TikTok creator and her stepdad shared their reactions online. 

Celebrity & Creator Cameos 

As is tradition, the Super Bowl 58 boasted many cameos from Hollywood’s most famous faces.  Ben Affleck and Matt Damon participated in Super Bowl advertising thanks to Dunkin, while Jennifer Anniston and the Beckhams filmed ads commercials with Uber Eats. 

This year, however, we also saw some of social media’s most famed creators, like Benny Drama (aka Benito Skinner) famous for his impressions and humor. Benny was featured in the e.l.f Cosmetics commercial, “Judge Beauty”. The creator was an out-of-the-box choice by e.l.f., so we dove into the Tubular data to see how much Benny aligned with the brand. 

According to Tubular data, Benny Drama was an excellent pick for e.l.f.:

• Benny has a 75-80% female audience – with the highest demo coming in at 25-34 years old
• Audience Also Watches revealed that Benito Skinner’s TikTok audience is 124.8x more likely to watch videos about Face Makeup (39% audience overlap)
• Consumer Insights revealed that over the past 6 months, Benito’s social viewers across platforms were 13x more likely to shop for Face Makeup on Amazon

Beyoncé partnered with Verizon and used the ad to promote her newest creative venture— country music! Her latest album, Act II, was announced during the Super Bowl. The Texas native is going back to her southern roots and pre-released two singles: Texas Hold ‘Em and 16 Carriages. In her attempt to “break the internet” with Verizon, she did cause quite the uproar and excitement on social media. The day after the Superbowl, TikTok uploads about Beyoncé saw a 137.8% increase and a 133.4% increase on Instagram.

On February 13, the song amassed over 40M TikTok views on videos featuring the sound. These are huge numbers to see just 3 days after dropping the tune. 

Undoubtedly TikTok has a way of promoting music and increasing audience engagement with songs. Makes us wonder what will happen next in the continuing discrepancy between UMG and TikTok after they recently pulled their entire library from the app.

While Beyoncé has built her incredible career around R&B Hip-Hop, Tubular data reveals that Country Music is a viable option that will surely resonate with her audiences. In fact, Beyoncé’s YouTube audience is 8.9x more likely to also watch Country Music Videos. Almost 40% of her YouTube audience overlaps with the country music genre. 

The 2024 Super Bowl brought new innovations for audience expansion. Celebrities like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Spongebob are blending together traditionally polarized groups – R&B meets country, Swifties meet NFL. Uncover more Tubular data about how Travis Kelce is becoming a highly coveted crossover star.

Simultaneously, social media creators are taking center stage in Super Bowl ads alongside Hollywood celebs. This is a testament to the changing dynamics of fame and audience targeting. No longer confined to traditional celebrity avenues, influencers are reshaping the narrative of entertainment. 

This Super Bowl revealed just how much the boundaries between categories and disciplines are becoming increasingly porous. This new, hyper-entangled world of media offers audiences a richer, more customizable viewer experience. It also allows publishers to reach more audiences than ever before and experiment with new advertising strategies. 

Want to learn more about Tubular and the social video insights we covered? Request a demo.

Source: All data is sourced from Tubular Intelligence as of 2/15/24 unless otherwise noted.

The post Super Bowl 58 Expands to New Audiences appeared first on Tubular Labs.

Come with us on a journey to revisit the stories that defined our year and, through data & insights, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how we evolved as a connected global culture in 2023.

Here are the most significant things that happened in 2023, according to social video stats.

MOST ENGAGING NEWS STORIES

Tubular teamed up with our partners at Chartbeat to unlock the
Top 100 Most Engaging Stories on site in 2023.

The journey from site to social is an interconnected ecosystem of traffic and information, and 2023’s top stories exhibited five core themes that we saw on both channels. Now, Tubular’s data tells the social video story of this year’s global headlines. Watch the highlights here:

Interested in powering your own social video insights?

While there was plenty of news shared on social, there were also countless other big moments in 2023 that we can’t forget to look back on. 

ENTERTAINMENT

Most popular themes and biggest players on the big screen, television, and podcasts.

2023 has been coined The Year of Barbie

The Barbie marketing team delivered a never-before-seen, cross-cultural marketing campaign that penetrated all industries. From Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge on HGTV to Coldstone Creamery’s signature flavor, and Barbie-licious Impala inline skates— everything the light touched was PINK!

→ During the Barbie movie premiere weekend, Barbie content amassed 1.2 billion TikTok views in 3 days. 

→ Meanwhile, the movie cross-promoted Oppenheimer’s premiere with hashtags like #barbieheimer which won 169 million views during the premier weekend.

→ Did you miss Tubular’s webinar with Mattel earlier this year? Watch the replay here.

Reality TV: “The show must go on” 

From talent contests to dating shows, Reality TV took center stage in 2023 while writers & actors negotiated with studios. Tubular’s social data indicates that YouTube views related to U.S. reality TV climbed by 55% YoY over the summer of writers’ strikes. We see that talent contest shows like America’s Got Talent perform best on Facebook while shows that feed into Hollywood drama tend to perform best where audiences can weigh in on TikTok and Instagram. 

→ The juiciest Reality TV came from the Vanderpump Rules cheating drama aka “Scandoval” which resulted in an average of 14.3 million social views per week in the month of May. 

→ The social frenzy drove show viewership, which more than doubled from season premiere to the season finale.

Video Podcasts are the New “Talk Shows”

Podcasts post clips from long episodes to repurpose content and connect with new audiences on social, enticing them to tune into the full version. 

The Joe Rogan Experience was the #1 global podcast of 2023 on Spotify for the fourth year in a row.

→ Rogan typically posts longer-form 10-15 minute clips on YouTube. 

→ In its best month, January 2023, Rogan’s podcast won 19.1 million minutes watched across YouTube & Facebook.

Call Her Daddy was the #2 global podcast of 2023 on Spotify for the second year in a row.

→ Call Her Daddy is leaning into TikTok with short-form clips to showcase mega guests on the pod.

→ Call Her Daddy’s media group, Unwell, recently brought on one of TikTok’s biggest influencers, Alix Earle, to run her own podcast called Hot Mess. 

Ms. Rachel takes center stage for kids’ entertainment

→ In July 2023, her Toddler Learning audience grew by 34%, likely powered by kids being out of school. Her Minutes Watched on YouTube and Facebook hit 5.7 billion, almost 2x more than any other individual U.S. account rivaling some of the longest-standing creators in this category.

→ Ms. Rachel focuses on posting longer, quality videos rather than posting a high quantity of videos.

WOMEN & SPORTS

Women’s Sports take center stage in 2023 and fan bases continue to grow.

March Madness & Women’s World Cup

Women’s March Madness saw record-breaking TV audiences for the women’s bracket, along with an impressive increase in social views, which escalated by 5x year-over-year across social platforms.

“It is actually terrible business if you are not tuning in. You are missing out on a large cultural moment. The bottom line is that equality is actually good for business, that is something special that the women’s game has and this is the premier women’s sporting event in the world bar none and this is a paradigm shift globally, not just in the U.S.” 

Megan Rapinoe, US Soccer Player

In 2022, women’s soccer amounted to 610 million U.S. YouTube views.

In 2023, that number more than doubled to 1.4 billion views as of December 11th.

Rihanna Won the 2023 Super Bowl

During her Super Bowl halftime performance, Riri showcased one of her Fenty Beauty products.

→ Fenty-related TikTok viewership surged by +278% over the major football weekend. 

→ NFL social viewers visiting Fentybeauty.com grew by 197% in the month following the game.

→ NFL visitors continued to visit the Fenty Beauty website long after Super Bowl buzz quieted on social, meaning that Rihanna’s halftime product promo had a lasting and memorable effect.

But Riri wasn’t the only female powerhouse helping women infiltrate the traditionally male audience of football…

The Taylor Swift Effect

You can’t talk about 2023 power couples without mentioning Taylor Swift and her Kansas City Chief, Travis Kelce.

Swift had a momentous year. Her Eras Tour became the highest-grossing global tour in history and the tour was brought to the silver screen for those who couldn’t afford her exorbitant ticket prices. She was also named Time’s Person of the Year 2023. Besides her own wild success, she has had quite the effect on football viewership as fans tune in to watch her cheer on her new NFL boyfriend.

→ Since she started dating footballer Travis Kelce, the NFL’s female audience has increased by 29.4% across Facebook & YouTube.

→ From June to October of 2023, Swift’s TikTok audience that also watches NFL videos rose from 2% to 15%.

Even Taylor’s smallest moves can have macro effects on the economy. For example, one single line from her 2022 Midnights album release included the lyrics “make friendship bracelets.”

You can probably guess what happened next. 

Swifties around the world started making nostalgic friendship bracelets to wear to the Eras tour. The likelihood that Taylor Swift’s social audience would shop on Amazon for bead kits went up by 71% in just one month.

NOSTALGIA

Barbie made a comeback, we’re wearing friendship bracelets, and listening to Miguel tracks from 2011 while wearing cargo pants and Uggs boots.

What year is it? 

Throwback music of 2023

Younger audiences use social platforms and music editing tools to breathe new life into old songs. Like the viral success of “Makeba” by Jain that was stuck in our heads all year long.

Comeback Song of the Year: “Makeba” by Jain

Originally posted in 2016 with little success, Makeba became one of the top charted songs of 2023 thanks to social video. 

→ In H1 2023, 679k videos used the song on TikTok

→ Amounting to 32.6 billion views

→ The original YouTube video has mirrored that success with 261 million views and 2.9 million engagements.

When Matthew Perry passed, Friends nostalgia spread like a social media wildfire.

→ Viewership about Perry peaked on October 30th, the Monday following his death. Tubular uncovered over 3 billion views across social platforms.

On TikTok, an acoustic version of the Friends theme song, “I’ll Be There For You” was released in August by Yan Escote with very little initial success. That is, until October 28th when the beloved Friends character was reported dead in his home.

The acoustic Friends theme song was picked up by TikTokers and used as the background for many videos commemorating different interviews and scenes from Friends where Perry can be seen laughing and hugging his cast mates. 

→ Since the actor’s death (just under two months ago), the song has accumulated 114.6M views across 3.3k TikTok uploads.

McDonald’s Grimace Trends on TikTok

Before 2023, Grimace was just a friendly, somewhat forgotten, friend of ole’ Ronald McDonald, but this year, the McDonald’s character was back with a vengeance with a new “Grimace birthday shake” horror trend.

→ The Grimace trend racked up over 1.2B views in June across platforms since the milkshake made the menu.

→ The most viewed TikTok video garnered over 33M views alone.

While McDonald’s may not have been expecting the horror trend on social, the fast food brand is continuing to lean into nostalgia in 2023 by launching the new retro restaurant, CosMc’s.

AUTHENTICITY

While we are pining for the good-old-days and what’s old is becoming new again, we are also looking for what’s real. 

The Clean Girl Takeover

Clean Girl aesthetic is the hottest fashion & beauty trend of 2023, propelled by celebs and influencers alike. Sofia Richie with her slicked-back hair, minimalist makeup and elegant luxury style has been an “it girl” of this trend.

→ In November of 2022, the “clean girl aesthetic” was at a slow simmer with 61 million views on TikTok in the first week of November. But in the first week of 2023, viewership boiled over by 3X to 219M views!

It’s time to say goodbye to the myriad of social trends that defined 2023, as the social landscape will continue to evolve and reflect the ever-changing state of human culture.

This year brought unprecedented success to female powerhouses in entertainment & sports, while also throwing back to classic trends from the 90s and early 2000s —before influencers even existed. The resurgence of familiar aesthetics, sounds, and cultural touchstones offers a comforting escape from the chaos of the present.

Amidst it all, the quest for authenticity in a filtered, AI world proved to be a driving force in the Creator Economy. Those who embraced vulnerability and genuine connections with their audiences thrived, emphasizing the importance of maintaining our humanity.

As we look forward to 2024, the only constant we can be certain of in this online world is change. New trends will arise, new platforms will launch, and these digital factors will affect the tapestry of our world. With the upcoming US Presidential Election, the Paris Olympics, and other global events. it will be crucial to understand how social media is influencing audiences and beliefs. Stay tuned into Tubular, where we will forecast all of 2024’s hottest trends and keep you up to date on audience behaviors.

See you next year!

All data as of 12/10/23 unless otherwise noted.

The post The Most Significant Events of 2023 on Social Media appeared first on Tubular Labs.

Over the last two decades, Survivor has recorded 45 seasons and counting. Big Brother is on season 25, and the Bachelor franchise has seen 28 seasons of The Bachelor, 20 seasons of The Bachelorette, and 9 seasons of The Bachelor in Paradise. Now, the legendary brand is airing its newest spin-off: The Golden Bachelor featuring a 70-year-old male lead.

In the early 2000s, a slew of iconic reality dating shows graced MTV and VH1. From Next to Date My Mom, memories of watching these pioneer reality shows are forever stained in the minds of millennials across America.

Whether it was Nicole Richie & Paris Hilton living in the country or 20 contestants fighting to survive in tribes on a remote island, Reality TV has become a staple of American culture. Thanks to 2023’s writer’s strike that lasted from May to September, we’ve seen a massive spike in viewership for this category.

Below, we’ll discuss:

• Reality TV’s growing footprint on social video
• Different types of content used to promote these shows
• Unique audience behaviors (and how brands can identify powerful partnerships)

The Writers Guild of America Strike

As major streaming on-demand giants have taken over a large chunk of entertainment production, the writers of these shows have been subjected to increasingly worse compensation for their work compared to traditional television production.

While the Writer’s Guild and network industry leaders negotiated an agreement for nearly six months, what content did networks push out? The only show genre that doesn’t call for writers: Reality TV.

As reality shows became one of the only options for TV networks, social content surrounding these shows also increased. Networks have posted stand-out clips from episodes, and creators have been commenting and sharing scandals that have erupted from television’s favorite reality dramas. 

Tubular Labs’ social data indicates that U.S. reality TV content has generated over 13 billion views on YouTube in 2023 so far. 

YouTube views related to U.S. reality TV climbed by 55% over the summer of writers’ strikes — from 1.29 billion in May to 2.00 billion in August. Much of this growth was driven by America’s Got Talent videos, which were pushed by both network-owned and fan channels. 

Highlights & Remarkable Moments

Talent-driven shows like America’s Got Talent, American Idol, and The Voice often share clips of remarkable moments. Similarly, reality shows like Survivor or Netflix’s Alone also post show highlights from their owned social account. Cooking shows like Hell’s Kitchen and The Great British Baking Show are the same!

Highlight clips are perfect to help promote contest and talent shows, and there are several reasons why:

• One reason is that social audiences don’t need to know the background stories behind contestants to enjoy the entertainment. You don’t have to watch an entire season of Dancing with the Stars to enjoy a perfect 10-samba performance!
• Another reason is that sharing wow-factor clips from these types of shows is often “feel-good” content. We’ve all shed a tear or two watching a young singer get the “golden buzzer” from Howie Mandel on America’s Got Talent.

Highlight clips act as an alternative viewing method for social audiences while also driving more viewership to the live shows. According to The Wrap, America’s Got Talent‘s most recent season premier was NBC’s most-watched Tuesday night program with 5.82 million live viewers.

Fan Reactions & User Generated Content

Dramatic series about dating and social groups see traffic driven by fan reactions and tabloid buzz. Likewise, the people on these shows often benefit from a personal brand like Bachelor alumnis who score major brand deals after their season aires.

With an endless supply of juicy drama and gossip, viewers feel more inclined to actually greater user-generated content. On social, we see a lot of reaction videos, TikTok sleuthing, and memes. The Bachelor franchise even has a name for its cult-like following: Bachelor Nation! This represents the masses of fans who are loyal to all arms of the brand.

In the last 356 days, there have been over 6.6k videos posted to TikTok with the hashtag #BachelorNation garnering over 555 million views. The top 20 videos of these videos are all posted by individual creators and fan accounts.

Drama and hot gossip always drives a massive amount of fan reactions online. One of the most drama-filled shows of 2023 was undoubtedly Vanderpump Rules, when a cheating scandal erupted among 3 of the cast members. In the graph below, you can see how TikTok views exploded as the affair unfolded in the public eye.

Season 10 of Lisa Vanderpump’s show premiered on February 8th with very little buzz translating to onto social. Then, we see a massive spike when the press caught wind of the alleged affair. With the media buzz whirling around three key cast members, creators took to TikTok to discuss the scandal, and show viewership skyrocketed in return.

After the first spike in social viewership in March 2023, we see content continue to ramp up, leading to the final episodes where Ariana Madix finds out her long-time partner and best friend are having a secret affair. As the drama plays out on screen, the show’s related social content averaged 14.3 million views per week in the month of May.

According to decider.com, season 10 of Vanderpump Rules kicked off with a mere 839k viewers and ended in a record-breaking finale with over 1.89 million live viewers. That’s more than double season 9’s finale with just over 780k live viewers. The Bravo network can thank the social uproar for driving many new viewers to the show.

Whether viewers enjoy inspiring talent contest videos or diving into hot gossip, social video is a place where television viewers can relive highlights and share their own sentiments.

Different shows attract different viewers

Reality TV provided networks with captivating content during the 6 month writer’s strike and Tubular data has proven that the category has grown on social by 55% over the summer of 2023.

For brands and advertisers, it’s important to understand how audiences’ interests and online shopping behaviors vary based on the shows they watch. 

Yes, audience demographics are important, but Tubular’s social media analytics tell a much more interesting story. 

In the graphics below you can see just how different these audiences are. America’s Got Talent’s viewers are likely to shop for a range of health-related products like mobility devices, Equate products, and green tea. On the other hand, the Vanderpump Rules audience shops for Braun razors from Target and is interested in celebrity figures like Taylor Swift and Jeff Bezos.

Surprisingly, many advertisers haven’t monetized the increasing video popularity of Reality TV to a significant extent. Over the last three months, Sonic Drive-In was the only sponsor for America’s Got Talent content on YouTube, and as a network, Bravo’s only sponsor was Disney’s Haunted Mansion. 

While the writers’ strike is over, actors are still on the picket lines, and shows are on back-log which means reality shows, sports, and news are largely the main genres available to TV audiences. 

That means advertisers need to learn to monetize this social content from Reality TV. There are two routes for advertisers to work with reality shows. One option is to be a sponsor of the actual show or social content. The second option is to work with characters from the show.

Compared to talent contest shows, contestants from dating shows or dramatic series like Vanderpump Rules often gain a larger social following for companies to leverage. That’s because viewers typically get to see these people on a more personal level and build more trust and rapport. These are some of the most important qualities that brands look for when partnering with influencers because audiences are more likely to buy products from influencers they trust.

Tubular’s in-depth behavioral insights can help companies decide which shows and contestants best suit their brand so they can systematically monetize Reality TV franchises that are growing in popularity.

Anyway, who’s tuning into the Love is Blind season finale?! 

Want to unlock a deeper understanding of social audiences? It’s time to request a free demo of Tubular, social video’s single source of truth. Click below to see the social landscape in a whole new way. 

The post Reality TV & The Writers Strike: Opportunities for Advertisers appeared first on Tubular Labs.

Presidential content on social is heating up! While Tubular’s social video analytics can’t predict who will win the 2024 presidential election, it can tell us what US audiences are interested in on social. It’s important to understand what videos and topics are trending because media does affect voter decisions and what happens in the polls. 

Let’s look at what social audiences are currently interested in and how young voters are engaging with political content ahead of an important election year.

Presidential social content ramps up! 

One of Tubular’s unique capabilities is measuring quality viewership. Our 30-second view metric using Tubular Audience Ratings allows you to differentiate between those who are watching and those who are scrolling. The following graph looks at US Presidential Election content on YouTube and Facebook, 30-second views have increased drastically from the beginning of the year:

Audiences watched 116 million minutes of US Presidential Election content on YouTube and Facebook in August of 2023. That’s up 104% from July! 

We can also use Audience Also Watches to tell us what social issues audiences are most interested in.

In the last 6 months, those who watch content in the US Presidential Election category on YouTube were most likely to also watch videos about Immigration. Following Immigration content is Guns & Politics, Transgender, and Women’s Rights.

With Tubular’s historical data, we can see that these social issues are also becoming more relevant to viewers as we get closer to the 2024 election. 

While these Top 4 social issues have come up in many debates in the past, one very new hot topic is the politicians’ ages…

Winning the Gen Z vote

2024 will be the first election where AI and TikTok are mainstream technologies used daily by America’s youngest voters. As the election continues to ramp up, the Tubular Team will be tracking how these new advancements are playing a role in the political landscape — but here’s what we can see so far. 

Age is not but a number

Vivek Ramaswamy is the first presidential candidate to join TikTok. The 38-year-old Republican candidate is leaning into the platform to reach the newest generation of voters. In his first video, he speaks directly to Gen Z and Millennials and says he wants to address issues that affect young people’s lives. 

He is also leaning into the very hot topic right now: the age of politicians. 

This issue has come to the forefront after several videos of House Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell (81), have shown him struggling to finish his sentences and losing his train of thought. Audiences have flooded social media with memes and videos about the elderly remaining in office after their prime. It has caused many to question, how old is too old?  

As the youngest presidential candidate, Ramaswamy is using this issue to his advantage. In other videos, he shows his children and shares “Day in the Life of a Presidential Candidate” content. The comments sections are flooded with questions asking him to share his views on topics like climate change. It’s interesting to see a presidential candidate engaging so closely with audiences as this is the type of interaction that younger audiences prefer and expect from their favorite creators. Will that translate to votes from these audiences? Only time will tell! 

AI could wreak havoc on the 2024 election

New technologies create unforeseen issues for presidential candidates. The most viewed TikTok video about the presidential election in August was a series of AI-generated photos of former president Trump running from and being obtained by cops. The video has 13.4 million views and over 1 million engagements. Nowhere on the post does it indicate that these photos are AI-generated. These very real-seeming images could be damaging for those in the race to the White House. Will AI-generated images create issues and spread false information about candidates?

While new technologies and social platforms might seem trivial to politicians, these new advancements are anything but. Media has a massive effect on what happens in the voting booth. Candidates and campaign teams who leverage social media to connect more authentically with Gen Z and Millennial audiences could seriously sway the outcome of the election.

We’re still over a year out from the election— but Tubular will be keeping a pulse on the social media story of the race to the White House. 

What political conversations, topics and issues will continue to take place on social?

Will more candidates lean into social media to speak candidly with audiences? 

Will we see a higher turnout of young voters thanks to the power of social?

We’ll be answering all these questions and more in the coming year. What do you think about presidential candidates taking to social media to answer questions and engage with voters?

If you want to stay on the pulse of culture through social video’s single source of truth, it’s time to request a free demo of Tubular. Click below to unlock social in a whole new way. 

The post How Will Social Media Affect the 2024 US Presidential Election? appeared first on Tubular Labs.

Check out the trends you may have missed: 

1. Short-form video
2. ChatGPT & AI 
3. News broadcasting on social
4. Music & Sounds

Today, we’re chatting all things ecommerce on social! Over the past year, there have been major platform advancements, emerging influencer strategies, cult products shattering industry precedents, and some… campaign mishaps.

Just recently, TikTok unleashed its own ecommerce shopping place and Statista projected the social-commerce market will grow to nearly $80 billion by 2025 in the US. If you think that ecommerce has passed its peak— think again! Social video and ecommerce are inextricably linked. Below, you’ll understand what strategies are driving ROI.

Video Categories Unlock Growth Opportunities

Here’s a map of the top TIkTok shopping categories. As per usual, Beauty is BIG —  followed closely by Home, and Fashion. These categories have developed strategic content formulas that have worked for many years. From make-up tutorials to shopping hauls, audiences are primed to explore new products this way and are ready to hit click-through links and make shopping decisions at the recommendation of their favorite creators. 

Meanwhile, creators from video categories such as Cleaning & Organizing and Cooking & Kitchen are still developing dynamics with their audience.  What types of content sells products? What is the best way to show off the features of drawer organizers or spaghetti pots? How do creators train audiences who are accustomed to buying these products in stores? 

These developing categories offer pockets of growth for emerging creators and brands looking to expand their social & online sales. Look towards the creators in these categories to guide your company’s content strategy. The data continues to reinforce that creators are extremely in touch with their audiences and understand how to connect with consumers on social long before large brand names do. 

Cult Products Flying Off Shelves

Stanley 1913 spent over 100 years establishing itself as a premier outdoor and camping brand. But in 2023, the company is leveraging social video to tap into other audiences, resulting in explosive growth. Beyond its traditional outdoor consumer base, Stanley has successfully engaged audiences from:

• College Campuses and Gen Zs
• Young Parents
• Fitness Enthusiasts

Stanley’s tumbler cup water bottle has become a social media sensation, achieving cult fame status. How did they manage this feat? It goes beyond having a high-quality product with attractive features — their game-changing social video strategy played a crucial role.

Stanley’s social media dominance has led to consistent product sellouts, prompting the brand to launch new color lines weekly to meet consumer demand. In the first six months of 2023, TikTok videos featuring the #stanleycup garnered an astonishing 700M+ views, overtaking other popular water bottle brands (and this is just water bottle content, not hockey).

Millennial parents have emerged as a significant target audience for Stanley. Tubular’s Consumer Insights revealed their interest in Stanley products:

• Amazon Stanley product buyers are 39x more likely to watch Potty Training videos
• Target Stanley shoppers are 21.3x more likely to purchase Diapers & Baby Products

The brand’s entry into the Millennial parent demographic was boosted by partnerships with lifestyle bloggers like YouTuber “But First, Coffee.” Her sponsored video that showcases the use of Stanley cups in her busy daily routine while managing her kids, proved highly successful. Viewers of her channel are 38.9x more likely to shop for Stanley products on Amazon.

Stanley also tapped into the fitness industry by partnering strategically with celebrity fitness influencers. A notable collaboration includes Katie Austin, a social media instructor affiliated with PopSugar Fitness. Her endorsement of Stanley products proved beneficial, as PopSugar Fitness viewers are 14.5x more likely to purchase Water Bottles on Amazon and 12.3x more likely to buy Stanley products

A Lesson from Stanley:

Stanley’s success story underscores the importance of thinking beyond your immediate category when it comes to advertising and paid partnerships. Your consumer base is multi-dimensional, and your marketing strategies should be too. Utilizing tools like Tubular’s Audience Also Watches can help you understand your audience’s diverse interests and guide your partnership strategies for the future. 

Collaborating with influencers adjacent to your category allows you to engage your existing consumers while expanding your reach to new ones.

Influencer Strategy: What Works — and What Doesn’t

It’s the Creator Economy — influencers shape trends, drive consumption, and dominate our social feeds. But in 2023, a new trend has emerged—de-influencing. This phenomenon took the social world by storm earlier this year. Tubular’s social video data analytics reported a staggering 332 million views and 35.5 million engagements on TikTok in the trend’s first 90 days. But what exactly is de-influencing?

De-influencing is precisely what it sounds like: creators on social platforms who encourage viewers not to purchase certain cult products promoted by popular influencers. Influencers’ product endorsements can trigger viral frenzies and mass sellouts, like Dior’s Addict Lip Glow Oil and Rare Beauty’s Soft Pinch Liquid Blush, both selling out after receiving rave reviews from influencers.

Despite the undeniable power of influencers, challenges have arisen. Economic disparities worldwide and recent influencer missteps have prompted a backlash. De-influencing, a movement that not often offers better and more affordable product alternatives or ‘dupes’.

So what puts brands at risk of scrutiny from de-influencers? One word: inauthenticity.

Gen Zs have a no-BS. meter when it comes to brands trying to sell products. They gravitate towards creators who are relatable and trustworthy. When a campaign feels out of touch, younger audiences have an adverse reaction. This was the case with one of 2023’s most infamous influencer trips: Tarte’s “Glow Around the Globe” Event.

Tarte’s “Glow Around the Globe” event illustrates the dynamics of de-influencing quite well. Thirty influencers (and their plus ones) attended an opulent, all-expenses-paid trip to Dubai including business class flights on Emirates, private villas at the Ritz-Carlton Al Khaimah, high-end wardrobes, makeup galore, lavish parties, and Al Wadi desert excursions. The trip was intended to promote Tarte’s new foundation but TikTok audiences responded with a spectrum of emotions, from FOMO to fandom— but mostly criticism for being “tone-deaf.”

Influencers at the center of this campaign included Alix Earle, Meredith Duxbury, and Monet McMichael. Their mission was clear: generate content during the trip. Influencers posted heaps of content— however, Tarte products were seldom mentioned throughout the trip. In fact, at the trip’s conclusion, Monet McMichael collaborated on a “Get Ready With Me” video with three other key influencers using the hashtag #trippinwithtarte. The video amassed over 1.5 million views and 7,000 comments in a week. 

To the surprise of many, almost none of the influencers discussed or used Tarte products while doing their makeup on camera. Comments such as this one highlighted the disconnect:

“I love how y’all are on the tarte trip and not one mention of tarte makeup, this is so real lmaoo” 

The lack of engagement with the brand’s products in content produced during the trip raised questions about the effectiveness of such influencer trips. However, the trip still generated tons of brand awareness and buzz across TikTok. As they say: there’s no such thing as bad press. 

The rise of de-influencing highlights the evolving landscape of influencer marketing. Brands must carefully consider their partnerships and ensure that influencers genuinely connect with their products to achieve meaningful results in an age where authenticity and transparency are paramount.

Benchmarking Sales from Social

Rihanna’s Super Bowl LVI halftime performance in February featured a clever integration of her own brands, notably Fenty Beauty. Her use of Fenty products on stage sparked significant social engagement. The hashtag #Invisimatte makeup compact had a viral TikTok moment, jumping from under 9k views on Super Bowl day to 20.8M in the two days after, leading to a +278% surge in TikTok viewership of Fenty-related content during Super Bowl weekend.

This strategic move to promote her makeup line on a global stage raised brand awareness, but did it translate to ROI? We used Tubular’s Consumer Insights data to evaluate impact on the NFL’s social audience. Surprisingly, NFL social viewers, who are not traditionally thought of as makeup fans, showed a significant interest in Fenty Beauty, with 5x more viewers visiting Fentybeauty.com in February than in the previous two months.

As you can see, the interest didn’t wane after the Super Bowl. NFL’s YouTube and Facebook audiences continued visiting the Fenty makeup website, with a 197% growth in the following month of March compared to December and January. 

This success is not only a win for Fenty Beauty but also benefits the NFL by diversifying its audience and attracting makeup enthusiasts to its football-focused channels. The story highlights the potential for success when brands cross categories and combine audiences, such as sports and beauty. Today’s social video audiences are multi-dimensional, and identifying these crossovers can lead to remarkable outcomes.

As more companies explore adjacent categories and blend audiences, Tubular’s Audience Also Watches technology provides valuable insights for reaching new audiences without significant risks. 

In the future, we can anticipate more partnerships between diverse categories, such as sports beverages collaborating with fashion bloggers and outdoor gear brands joining forces with mommy bloggers. To discover new audiences with a low-risk strategy, consider exploring Tubular’s Consumer Insights, Audience Ratings, and Audience Also Watches technologies through a free demo.

If you missed the first three segments of our H2 Social Trends series, you can find the data deep-dives here: 

• H2 Social Trends: Short-Form Video
• H2 Social Trends: ChatGPT & AI
• H2 Social Trends: News on Social
• H2 Social Trends: Music & Sound

Want to share insights with your team? Download the full info-graphic style report here instantly: 

The post H2 Social Trends: Social eCommerce & the Creator Economy appeared first on Tubular Labs.

• The Grimace trend has racked up 855.7M views across platforms since it started earlier in June
• #Grimace and #Grimaceshake are the top 20 and 21 hashtags on TikTok in the past week from US creators
• The most viewed TikTok video garnered over 33M views alone

Lot’s of attention — but not particularly the messaging McDonald’s was hoping for. So was it a marketing frenzy or marketing flop? Let’s dive into the trend that’s jumped out from behind the bushes and taken audiences by surprise! 

A month ago, Grimace was just a friendly, somewhat forgotten, friend of ole’ Ronald McDonald.  But his distinctive purple color and roundish figure first made its appearance in McDonald’s cast of colorful characters in the early 1970s. Back then, Grimace was quite a different creature altogether. 

He was a villainous character with multiple pairs of arms, often depicted as a milkshake thief. But over time, the McDonald’s brand evolved, and so did Grimace. In fact, he underwent what can only be described as a “Grimacevolution.” As the years passed, his limbs reduced in number, and his personality shifted to a more friendly and lovable demeanor. While Grimace’s villainous role was abandoned, his obsession with McDonald’s milkshakes would never die. 

So for his birthday, McDonald’s decided to celebrate with the launch of the Grimace Milkshake and a Grimace social media takeover. On June 5, Grimace posted from the McDonald’s Twitter account a photo with the caption: “fhioea;odijcfaewklcldW”. Then replied to their own tweet:

The company even changed their photo to a picture of the purple friend and their bio to “this is grimace btw :)”.

Unlike the world of television, social media allows brand characters like Grimace to interact with audiences by reacting, commenting, and reposting— breathing a whole new life into once one-dimensional characters.

Before we understand how did TikTok turned a cheery milkshake launch into a death-inducing horror story, we want to see how Gen Z interacts with fast food brands on social. 

Gen Z is a tough audience for fast food brands. This generation has a ‘No BS’ meter. They also exhibit a deep desire to invest their money in companies that are socially and environmentally conscious. This has been a more challenging audience to break into for fast food restaurants that aren’t traditionally seen in this light. Luckily, social video offers the best tool to reposition brands in a way that appeals to these younger consumers. 

Where Millennials and Gen X are considered the pioneers of social media, Gen Z is a generation that was born into it. This makes them natural social creators & engagers. They don’t just share, like, and repost – they prefer to create and share their unique spin on trends. Thus, interesting storylines give Gen Z audiences something to interact with.

And while McDonald’s attempted to bury Grimace’s evil past over the years, Gen Z also has an affinity for nostalgia. With the rapid spreading of information on short-form video platforms, this audience can quickly unearth details and stories of the past just by scrolling. Finding out about Grimace’s dark years was all the fuel they needed to start a hilarious trend.

As your social video data geeks, the team at Tubular wanted to understand the science behind how this trend struck viral gold.

First, we know that all audiences are different. From a generational perspective, the McDonald’s advertisers of the past felt that Gen X-ers and Millennials weren’t resonating with the evil six-armed milkshake bandit. They preferred a big friendly purple giant that resembled Barney or the Teletubbies. Gen Z however, enjoys the fun of creating a mini ‘horror film’ on TikTok and sharing it with their community. 

Tubular’s social video insights indicated that in 2022, typical new menu item content generated the most views, however entertaining content generated the most engagement for fast food brands. Plus, data suggests that views don’t impact audience loyalty and conversion rates—but engagement does.

So you want the secret sauce to engagement? It’s entertainment. 

While McDonald’s might not have intended to have millions of views racking up on videos of milkshake drinkers choking, convulsing, and being hunted by Grimace, it is certainly a marketing win! 

Rather than take a chance and hope for a happy accident that will skyrocket your latest menu item into virality, it’s best to actually know your audience beforehand. With video analytics and behavioral data, you can understand the unique flavor of humor and content preferences of audiences. Identify culturally relevant content and partnerships by looking at what consumers already watch and who they interact with on social video.

Tubular’s Audience Also Watches data found that in 2022, McDonald’s viewers are highly likely to also watch content from Food & Bev, Kids Entertainment, and Gaming creators. 

Tubular’s Consumer Insights data also found that Gaming was the top product category the McDonald’s audience shops for on Amazon. This data confirms that McDonald’s choice to create a Grimace Game with the launch of their Grimace birthday milkshake would help drive engagement.

You can increase your chances of kicking off a viral trend by first understanding what your audience enjoys making user generated content about.

While brands can’t control UGC messaging the way they can with owned content, it’s an opportunity to be in dialogue with your consumers, achieve cultural relevance, and find inspiration for your own strategy and even for your menu. Even if a happy birthday milkshake is turned into a blood-ravaging drink, it’s still perceived as more authentic. More authenticity translates to higher conversions and brand trust. For Gen Z, these qualities are non-negotiable.

Challenges, product tests, memes and videos about secret menu items are a few examples of what content creators enjoy making fast-food-related content about.

Insights to Actions: 

Social video is a dance of communication, reaction, engagement, and learning. Today’s youngest audiences don’t have patience or time for brands and creators who aren’t staying relevant to the conversation. 

• Anticipate trends before they happen to stay ahead of the curve
• Understand what audiences are watching, engaging with, and buying— speak their language, and embrace their culture
• Step out of the traditional advertising models and into what audiences are choosing to interact with

If you’re interested in learning more about how Tubular can help fast-food brands connect and keep pace with Gen Z audiences, read our report: Nourishing Relations with Fast Food Diners on Social Video

If you want to stay on the pulse of culture through social video’s single source of truth, it’s time to request a free demo of Tubular. Click below to unlock social in a whole new way. 

The post McDonald’s New Menu Item Breaks TikTok: The numbers behind the viral trend appeared first on Tubular Labs.

Remember when Rihanna slayed the Super Bowl LVI halftime performance back in February? Of course you do. 

If you missed Tubular’s initial analysis of the show, you can find it here. 

Long story short, the singer notoriously plugged her own brands during her big stage performance. Now, almost four months later, we’re looking back with Tubular’s Consumer Insights data to understand how Rihanna’s on-stage nod to Fenty Beauty paid off by tracking historical behavioral trends of the NFL’s social audience.

Although Rihanna has climbed to the top of celeb-status with her chart-topping music, she has made far more money from her Fenty beauty, skincare and fashion brands. Of course, the Super Bowl was the perfect place for the artist to integrate all her brands and music at the highest level of visibility…and so she did.

How did she do it? When her hit song, “All of the Lights” came on, audiences watched as Riri applied her own brand’s #Invisimatte makeup compact before she took the stage by storm.

With over 2.5 million engagements in just 3 days after posting, this video says it all. “Y’all wanted a special guest, right?!”

The special guest was, of course, Rihanna’s iconic Fenty Beauty product and yes— it had its own viral TikTok moment. On Super Bowl day, February 12th, the product hashtag had under 9k views on TikTok. In two short days, that number skyrocketed to 20.8M.

Overall, TikTok viewership on Fenty-related content surged by +278% during Super Bowl weekend.

Plugging her makeup line on the world’s biggest stage was a great move for brand awareness, but did it actually drive ROI? We’ve all seen plenty of campaigns that have the whole internet talking but don’t actually push sales.

Let’s see how Queen RiRi’s beauty brand fared over the following months, through the lens of Tubular’s Consumer Insights data. 

Our data analysts looked at the NFL’s audience across YouTube and Facebook around the Super Bowl using Tubular’s Audience Ratings and Consumer Insights. Keep in mind, National Football League viewers don’t typically have a huge crossover with beauty shoppers.

Not surprisingly, NFL unique viewers spiked to over 100M in February 2023, as everyone geared up for the Super Bowl and fans around the world reacted to the game, the famous ad breaks, and of course, Rihanna’s epic performance. 

But it was more than people just interested in football. Within the NFL’s social audience, 5x the number of viewers visited Fentybeauty.com in the month of February than the previous two months. It’s clear to see that the singer’s brand achieved an initial spike in website visitation associated with her Super Bowl performance (especially after the NFL’s video of the full halftime show replay dropped), but the story doesn’t end there.

The NFL’s YouTube and Facebook audiences continued to visit the Fenty makeup website with higher visitation numbers in the months following the Super Bowl compared to pre-event. Specifically, NFL viewers visiting Fentybeauty.com grew by 197% in the following month of March (vs. December and January).

This is no easy feat. Many brands invest in influencer partnerships and expensive campaign strategies only to see a temporary peak in sales. Rihanna’s brand, however, saw those numbers continue to climb in the following months post-performance. This is also a positive for the NFL as her show likely diversified their audience and drew more makeup enthusiasts to their football-focused channels. Win-win.

Consumer Insights data often shows positive impact when brands and media companies reach across categories to combine audiences. The math can be quite simple: Sports + Beauty = legendary success. What other cross-overs would lead to success?  Fashion and Gaming? Food and Automotive? Today’s social video audiences are extremely multi-dimensional. No one is just a beauty viewer or just a sports viewer. Each individual has their own unique concoction of categories and videos they like which algorithms can identify and cater to.

Tubular’s Audience Also Watches technology lets companies understand growing crossovers categories so they can reach new audiences without a significant risk.  

In the future, we expect to see more and more companies dipping their toes into adjacent categories and blending audiences. For example, many up and coming sports beverages are partnering with fashion bloggers. Outdoor gear brands have partnered with mommy bloggers to reach those parents on the go! 

If you want to reach new audiences with a strategy that minimizes risk, it’s time to test drive Tubular’s Consumer Insights, Audience Ratings & Audience Also Watches technologies. Request a free demo today.

If you’re interested in staying on the pulse of culture through social video’s single source of truth, it’s time to request a free demo of Tubular. Click below to unlock social in a whole new way. 

The post Did Rihanna’s Super Bowl Performance Drive Fenty Beauty Sales? appeared first on Tubular Labs.