Marketing Solutions White Paper Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? Study Reveals a New Path to Box Office Sales Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? Marketing Solutions White Paper 02 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper Table of Contents Introduction 04 Study Methodology 06 Key Findings 09 Studio Ad Spends at a Glance How Much Credit Should Marketing Get for Driving Box Office Sales? Which Media Channels Powered the Most Ticket Sales? Which is the Most Efficient Digital Channel? The Role of VIV (Viral Impression Volume) VIV and Organic Search Movie Marketers Should Rethink Revenue-Boosting Spend 20 Findings at a Glance 23 Methodology 24 About Neustar 28 Marketing Solutions 03 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper Introduction In 1975, Universal Pictures placed a bold bet on a film release. To advertise an upcoming summer film, the studio placed a then-astounding $700,000 into national TV spots—at a time when studios barely spent on TV ads at all. The move paid off. That film release was Jaws, the picture became the highest-grossing movie to date; and nearly overnight, television became the new anchor of the studio media mix. Television took its place in studio marketing, largely because one film team was ready to radically rethink its marketing investments. Is it time for studio marketers to reconsider their investments once again? Based on findings from Neustar’s recent analysis of the most effective movie marketing channels, the answer is yes. Neustar—engaged by Facebook—evaluated 70 major studio releases across a wide variety of genres, representing $1.8 billion in marketing spend and the majority of wide-release box office sales. Facebook had questions about its own contribution to box office sales, particularly its impact on the overall media mix. They asked us to study the following questions: §§ What type of channel mix most effectively generates incremental box office revenue? §§ What specific role does Facebook play in this mix? Neustar’s findings showed that while TV remains a highly impactful movie marketing channel, digital advertising tops TV in some crucial areas of primary importance to movie marketers. The time may be right for marketers to jump back into the water. The marketing mix tides appear to have, once again, changed course. Neustar’s findings showed that while TV remains a highly impactful movie marketing channel, digital advertising tops TV in some crucial areas of primary importance to movie marketers. Marketing Solutions 04 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? Marketing Solutions White Paper 05 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper Scripting the Research Study Methodology To conduct our analysis, we looked at the advertising channels for 70 US movies released into theaters in 2016, representing the majority of wide-release box office sales. The analysis covered eight different marketing channels—TV, online display, online video, paid Facebook advertising, out of home advertising (OOH), radio, print, and paid search—representing $1.8 Billion in total marketing spend. Our study focused on the 15 weeks leading up to each film release and the six weeks after the movies hit theaters. We also evaluated the following factors to uncover the relationship between channel spend and ticket sales: §§ Impact of marketing on ticket sales: Were audiences more likely to buy movie tickets after viewing ads on a given media channel? §§ Influence of earned and organic digital marketing on ticket sales: How do earned media like movie trailer social media shares (or “viral views”) and organic search influence moviegoers’ purchase journeys? §§ Role of key control factors: Our analysis also measured—and controlled for—the impact of other influential factors, such as: -- Seasonality: Was the movie released in the summer, or during “dump months”? -- Competitive ad spend: How much of a role did ad budget size play in film success? -- Production budget: Did blockbuster-budget films outperform smallerbudget films, as expected? -- Star casting: What is the relationship between big-name leads and the bottom line? -- Audience approval: How did early audiences’ feelings about a film influence the release’s subsequent fortunes? -- Economic Factors: Did our research bear out reports that movie attendance goes up during hard times? -- Type of film: To further eliminate bias, we compartmentalized our studies into movie genre and how well each film performed—to avoid unfair comparisons of romantic comedies with family dramas1, or mega-blockbusters with bottom-performing sleepers. “Family dramas" consisted primarily of animated films. 1 Marketing Solutions 06 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper We ran these inputs, plus box office data for each film, through a variety of Bayesian statistical models (a statistical approach used for estimating real-world scenarios that are characterized by a high degree of uncertainty). The outcomes showed us how each of the factors were likely to influence box office sales. We’re highly confident in our models, and in our findings. To test our models’ accuracy, we went back to the original raw data and ran it through the models, to see if we could “predict” actual box office revenue. The models were accurate to within five percent of actual box office revenue. We’re highly confident in our models ... they were accurate to within five percent of actual box office revenue. Marketing Solutions 07 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? Marketing Solutions White Paper 08 White Paper Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? Key Findings A Sneak Peek Studio Ad Spends at a Glance On average, studios spent $27.4 million to market their releases. How effective was that spend at driving moviegoers to new releases? And how could marketers have changed the media portfolio across that $27.4 million to drive still more box office revenue? These questions form the basis of our findings about media effectiveness in the studio mix, highlighted below. BENCHMARKING: FILM MEDIA SPEND BY CHANNEL RADIO PRINT, 1% OOH PAID SEARCH, 0.1% ONLINE VIDEO (EXCLUDING FB) ONLINE DISPLAY 3% FACEBOOK PAID IMPRESSIONS 2% 4% 5% 6% TV 80% Marketing Solutions 09 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper "I'd Like to Thank ..." How Much Credit Should Marketing Get for Driving Box Office Sales? How much does marketing—and in particular, paid marketing—influence box office sales? It’s a question many a studio CMO (and CFO) would like to the answer to. Our findings show that, across the 2016 movies analyzed, paid media plays a huge role—but not the only one: §§ 44% of box office sales were attributable to paid media efforts. §§ The remaining 56% were driven by non-paid initiatives, including PR, movie talent, and other factors. In short: Whether a film soared or bombed at the box office, media investment drove (on average) 44% of the results. WHAT WORKS AT THE BOX OFFICE: PAID AND UNPAID CONTRIBUTION TO OPENING WEEK REVENUE 56 % 44 % Marketing Solutions Non-Paid Activities (PR, Talent, added value, sponsorships, etc.) Total Paid Media Influence 10 White Paper Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? In a Star Turn Which Media Channels Powered the Most Ticket Sales? Just as some actors are known for their revenue-driving power, the same is true with marketing outlets. Some channels drive more ticket sales than others. In our study, two channels in particular stand out: §§ Digital Media2: -- Digital media were responsible for 46% of paid media-driven box office revenue, making digital overall the channel with the biggest sales impact. -- Digital also represented just 14% of marketing budgets, compared to TV’s 82%. • Delivering four percent more sales than television at just a third of the cost, digital was the most efficient medium within the studio marketing mix. §§ Television: With its captivating power and broad reach, TV remains a powerful “megaphone” for convincing moviegoers to see any given film. It was responsible for 42% of paid media-driven box office revenue in 2016. MEDIA EFFICIENCY AND SHARE OF MARKETING AND SPEND 5.0 PAID FACEBOOK MEDIA 3.2 OTHER OFFLINE (OOH, RADIO, AND PRINT) 2.9 ONLINE VIDEO (EXCLUDING FACEBOOK) 2.3 ONLINE DISPLAY 0.5 TV % of Contribution/% of Spend 20% 4% 12% 4% 12% 4% 13% 6% 42% 82% Share of Marketing Contribution Share of Spend igital media includes studio-owned digital properties, digital and social media platforms, D display and video advertising networks, exchanges, paid search, and more. 2 Marketing Solutions 11 White Paper Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? "And the Winner is ..." Which is the Most Efficient Digital Channel? Diving deeper into digital media, the most efficient paid digital outlet was paid Facebook media (advertising on Facebook). On average, paid Facebook media: §§ Comprised four percent of the average film media budget, but delivered… -- An average of nine percent of opening weekend box office revenue, and -- 20% of marketing-driven sales. §§ Saw a $7.91 return on ad spend (ROAS): for every dollar a studio spent on Facebook, it earned close to eight dollars back. §§ Delivered five times higher returns than media overall—and even greater returns for specific movie types: -- Facebook delivered six times more returns than media overall in the action and family genres. -- Amongst top box office performers, it delivered seven times more returns than media overall. §§ Was 10x more efficient than TV ads at driving studio marketing ROAS. On average, paid Facebook media was: 4 % of the average film media budget Marketing Solutions 10x more efficient than TV ads at driving studio marketing ROAS 12 Share of Marketing Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? Impact Paid Search Print Radio OOH Online Video Online Display Facebook Paid Media TV 0.7% 3.2% 5.1% 4.1% 11.6% 13.4% 20.1% 41.8% Share of Average White Paper Spend 0.1% 0.7% 2.2% 1.0% 3.9% 5.8% 4.0% 82.2% RELATIVE IMPACT ON SALES VS. SHARE OF SPEND 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% Paid Search Print Radio OOH Share of Marketing Impact Online Video Online Display Facebook Paid Media TV Share of Average Spend Relave Impact on Sales vs. Share of Spend While TV was responsible for the lion's share of the budget (82%), it was responsible for only 42% of the media-driven box office revenue in 2016. Facebook was, by far, the most 90% efficient of all media channels. 80% It 70% is clear that studios have the opportunity to make significant improvements to their media 60% mix allocations, especially given the cross-channel inefficiencies that weighed 50% the total ROAS baseline. down 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Paid Search Print Radio OOH Share of Markeng Impact Marketing Solutions Online Video Online Display Facebook Paid Media TV Share of Average Spend 13 White Paper Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? PAID FACEBOOK ROAS BY BOX OFFICE TIERS3 +7.4X $27.62 +5.0X +4.7X +3.3X $7.91 $5.24 $3.73 $1.59 All Titles $1.13 Top 10 $0.22 $0.74 Middle Total Media ROAS Bottom 10 Paid Facebook ROAS PAID FACEBOOK ROAS BY GENRE +5.7X +6.7X +5.0X $14.43 $10.92 +4.8X $7.91 $5.09 $1.59 All Titles $1.64 Action Total Media ROAS $2.51 Family Dramas $1.06 Other Paid Facebook ROAS Top 10" includes the top 10 performing films by total box office revenues. "Bottom " 10" includes the lowest 10 performing films by total box office revenues. "Middle" includes the remaining films in neither the Top 10 nor the Bottom 10 categories. 3 Marketing Solutions 14 White Paper Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? Our analysis also found that Facebook paid media impacted earned engagements online. Facebook paid media drove six percent of film-specific Google search activity, and 50% of viral film impressions. In other words: Facebook users who were exposed to studio ads in Facebook were also likely to share those ads with their friends, and to go to Google to learn more about the films. HOW FACEBOOK IMPACTS THE BOX OFFICE Total Box Office Revenue Organic Search 20% Viral Impressions 6% 50% Paid Facebook Media Share of Marketing Contribution Of outcomes driven by marketing, Facebook is responsible for 20% of box office sales, 6% of film-related organic search, and 50% of film-related viral impressions. Marketing Solutions 15 White Paper Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? Supporting Actor Award Goes To The Role of VIV (Viral Impression Volume) In 1999 a team of unknown filmmakers set up a website for their new film, and garnered 20 million page views before opening day. Boosted by that online success, that film—The Blair Witch Project—went on to earn $249 million worldwide, a nearly 10,000-fold return on the film’s under-$25,000 production budget. Studios took note: there was a strong connection between box office sales and viral success. While we didn’t see 10,000x returns across any of our findings, we did see significant correlations between viral activity and the box office. Specifically, Facebook viral impression volume (VIV)—the number of movie posts, paid or organic metrics sourced from FB Graph API, that have been liked, commented upon, or shared by Facebook users’ friends—appeared to strongly impact box office performance, particularly in the weeks ahead of the release. §§ Overall, top-performing performing films had nearly double the VIV of middle- performing films, and eleven times that of bottom-performing releases. §§ An increase of 25% in VIV corresponded to a six percent increase in box office revenue. IMPACT OF VIRAL IMPRESSIONS ON BOX OFFICE REVENUE Box Office Revenue 90,000,000 80,000,000 70,000,000 60,000,000 50,000,000 40,000,000 30,000,000 20,000,000 10,000,000 - Marketing Solutions 25% 50% 75% 100%Viral Average Impressions Volume: 8.5M Impressions 125% 150% 175% 200% 16 White Paper Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? TOP-PERFORMING FILMS: 59 MILLION IMPRESSIONS MIDDLE PERFORMING FILMS: 31 MILLION IMPRESSIONS Week 6 Week 5 Week 4 Week 3 Week 2 Opening Week T- 1 T- 2 T- 3 T- 4 T- 5 T- 6 T- 7 T- 8 T- 9 T- 10 T- 11 T- 12 T- 13 T- 14 T-15 AVERAGE WEEKLY VIV BOTTOM PERFORMING FILMS: 5 MILLION IMPRESSIONS Top-performing films have nearly 2x the VIV compared tomiddle performing films and 11x the bottom performing films The Road to Better Performance VIV and Organic Search At the total box office level, VIV and Organic Search-another major source of unpaid digital engagement-showed strong correlations to box office sales as well as to each other. Leading up to opening week, VIV proved 2.6 times more impactful on film performance than organic search did from 15 weeks before films hit the theaters up until six weeks ahead of launch. As the release date approached, the impact of the two kinds of engagement evened out; post-launch, organic search became the slightly more impactful of the two.4 4 It should be noted that while both VIV and organic search were strong indicators for box office performance overall, the results varied widely across individual film releases. Marketing Solutions 17 White Paper Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? Box Office Revenue THE IMPACT OF VIV AND ORGANIC SEARCH R2= 0.57174 Box Office Revenue Facebook Viral Impressions R2 = 0.21361 Organic Search Index *Outliers removed from analysis AVERAGE MOVIE TREND FOR VIRAL IMPRESSIONS AND ORGANIC SEARCH 15 Weeks - 6 Weeks from Launch 5 Weeks – 1 Week from Launch While in Theaters VIV is 2.6 times stronger as an indicator of Box Office Revenue As a near term indicator Organic Search is slightly stronger than VIV Online Search has a correlation of 0.86 while VIV is only 0.75 Viral Impressions Marketing Solutions Organic Search 18 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper VIV may be a signal of future box office success, but due to the fact that virality is unplanned—and therefore not causal—it would be more useful as a directional planning metric than as a primary KPI. Marketing Solutions 19 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper Moral of the Story Movie Marketers Should Rethink Revenue-Boosting Spend Across the movie titles we analyzed, television was the biggest media driver of ticket sales—but not the most efficient one. Instead, our study found that at the current spend levels within each channel, digital outlets were significantly more efficient at driving box office revenue than any type of offline media— TV included. For the most impactful marketing mix, the way forward is clear: movie marketers should continue investing in television, but capitalize on digital efficiency by shifting a portion of their TV dollars into digital media. The specific best ratios will vary from one release to the next. However, we can offer two indications of the opportunity at hand. Our models show that, on average, studios that shifted six percent of TV spend over to digital could see a seven percent increase in box office revenue. Further, our findings also saw that earned viral activity (specifically VIV) driven by paid engagements could very well be an early indicator of box office success. In the movie business, rethinking an old story can result in a new classic. Like we saw with Jaws and The Blair Witch Project, this is as true for marketing as it is for the film itself. Our findings show that it’s time to rethink the story once again. Marketing Solutions 20 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper Shifting 6% of a title’s TV budget over to digital media could yield an average 7% net box office increase. AVERAGE MOVIE BUDGET BEFORE AND AFTER 6% TV REALLOCATION -$1.3M Budget ($M) 25 20 $22M $20.7M +$1.3M $54.8M 10 $3.8M $5.1M 5 Marketing Solutions +$3.9M (+7%) $58.7M 15 0 AVERAGE BOX OFFICE REVENUE BEFORE AND AFTER 6% TV REALLOCATION TV Digital Original Budget Shifted Budget 21 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? Marketing Solutions White Paper 22 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper The Plot Synopsis: Findings at a Glance Television advertising was responsible for roughly 42% of media-driven box office performance, and approximately 82% of the overall marketing budget. Digital media was responsible for 46% of media-driven box office sales, and 14% of the overall advertising budget. §§ Within digital: Facebook paid media represented four percent of film media budgets, but drove 20% of media-driven sales. $4 million in additional box office revenue Marketing Solutions Shifting six percent of TV over to digital media would yield on average net increase of seven percent to box office revenue. §§ For the average $27.4 million advertising budget for a film release, this would translate into an additional four million dollars in box office revenue. 23 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper Appendix Methodology The Neustar MarketShare Analytics Approach Neustar MarketShare uses econometric regression—a methodology of finding clear patterns in the noise of market data—to establish the mathematical relationships between marketing investments and sales outcomes. Our work correlates brands’ marketing tactics with their weekly shifts in sales, while controlling for other factors that may impact those sales—such as the economy, price, and competitive actions. Doing this lets us pinpoint which tactics drive the most revenue, and what factors may negatively impact sales. Other approaches look at the impact of a single marketing channel at one moment in time. However, we believe this point of view oversimplifies the realities that marketing impact changes over time, and that the impact of any one marketing channel is actually the result of a wide array of variables. Because that’s so, we base our marketing analyses on three key tenets for evaluating marketing effectiveness: 1. Evaluate Diminishing Returns: Multiple studies of the relationship between advertising and sales demonstrate that, past a certain spend level, returns on incremental ad spend begin to wane and finally disappear. The impact of any marketing channel will rise with each additional dollar, but will ultimately peak and wane. 2. Separate Marketing Effectiveness from the Base: Sales revenue is driven by two factors: §§ The base—the ongoing factors that influence sales absent any marketing at all. These variables range from the economy, to local market trends, to the weather and time of year. §§ Marketing’s role is to use levers within its control—such as media—to push sales beyond that base. To evaluate the impact of each marketing channel, brands must first understand the base; then, they must see how customers have changed their likelihood to buy beyond the base. 3. Measure Synergies Individual marketing resources do not work in isolation, but rather in conjunction with one another. For instance, a TV ad may prime a viewer to be more responsive to an online display ad later on. Because this is so, marketing spend in any given medium typically increases the impact of all other media—and measuring the impact of any one marketing channel must take these synergies into account. Marketing Solutions 24 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper To capture how the different variables work together, our models identify the full range of factors flowing into media effectiveness and of what influences sales, whether paid or unpaid, direct or intermediate. This includes how media touchpoints work together—for instance, how direct mail is made more effective when accompanied by TV and online display. This also includes the ways media impacts sales through intermediary touchpoints: for instance, if a TV ad drives an organic online search or social media buzz (e.g., earned conversations)—indirectly driving up sales. We model the variables independently; then, in the final model, we link all the equations together, providing a more complete view of the direct and indirect impact of media on sales. The approach we use is called a log-log multiplicative model, which is based on the equation: log(Sales) = log(Base) + 1log(X1) + 2log(X2) + 3log(X3) + error (In practice the structure—and the equation—is far more nuanced; but the fundamental principles are the same.) Model Validation To make sure our models are correct, we run through a series of checks to ensure accuracy including: §§ Checks for multicollinearity: This refers to what happens when multiple factors correlate equally with an outcome and it’s nearly impossible to determine whether both factors are driving the outcome, or if one factor is impacting all the others. We identify multicollinearity and, depending on the circumstances, either combine the multicollinear factors, or throw them out entirely. §§ “Sanity checks” comparing our learnings against: -- Known business truths, including what we’ve learned over the course of building thousands of models across products and industries. -- Industry standards for the degree to which given factors typically influence marketing impact (marketing contribution, source of volume change, and relative effectiveness of each touch point/coefficient) §§ “Predicting” the past: Once we’ve built our models, we return to the original raw data and run it through the models, to see if we can use those same models to identify actual market events that happened in the past. If the models can use the data to accurately predict outcomes we know have happened, they are likely to be highly accurate. Marketing Solutions 25 Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? White Paper Applying the Methods: The Box Office Study In this study, we used Bayesian hierarchical regressions—Bayesian models specifically designed to capture multi-layered problems with a wide array of variables in play. We ran movie title sales and marketing data through these regressions to evaluate the impact of various media channels on box office sales. The resulting models were multiplicative—they were designed to reflect the reality that media influence is something that builds with every additional channel. For a purely illustrative example: a TV ad might make a moviegoer five percent more likely to see a film, a display ad might make the same moviegoer four percent more likely to see a film, but the combined effect of seeing the TV ad and the online display unit may make the viewer a full 12% more likely to see the film. We were sure to capture that synergistic effect within the models. We created our research models in two stages. First, we captured the impact of media on each individual film. Next, we combined our learnings from each movie into category averages—grouping findings by categories including genre and movie performance level. We also looked at the influence of non-marketing factors—like seasonality and the movie cast’s “star power”—which may have either helped or hurt box office performance, and that we would need to control for in our models. We ran our media, box office, and control variables through the following steps: §§ Using a battery of Granger tests—which show whether one set of occurrences are likely to foreshadow another— and correlation analyses, which show when variables often emerge together. These gave us the test factors which were good predictors of box office sales. §§ We ran cluster analyses, grouping variables together including movies by genre and movies by performance level. §§ We identified multicollinear variables—such as Facebook paid media spend and 10 second video views (as mentioned above). §§ We also threw out variables that did not vary enough from one movie to the next, as that lack of variance made them poor predictive factors for film performance. §§ We ran the remaining factors through further models to correlate how strongly they seemed to influence box office sales, and to rank those influences from strongest to weakest. Marketing Solutions 26 White Paper Do Movie Marketing Budgets Need a Digital Reboot? The metrics and indicators we examined include: Paid Metrics Earned Metrics Ratios Video Views Video Views Paid to Organic Page Impressions Page Impressions Paid to Shares Page Post Impressions Page Post Impressions Paid to Likes Page Engagements Page Engagements Paid to Reactions Total Impressions Viral Impression Volume5 Paid to Engagements 10s / total earned video Our data sources included: Data Source Data Description Facebook Paid and Organic activity Kantar Media Offline Media, Paid Search Pathmatics Online Display, Online Video WARC Average Media Costs Rentrak Box Office Sales Moody’s Economic Indicators iral Impression Volume (VIV) is the number of movie posts that have been liked, commented V upon, or shared by Facebook users’ friends 5 Marketing Solutions 27 Marketing Solutions White Paper About Neustar. Neustar, Inc. is a leading global information services provider driving the connected world forward with responsible identity resolution. As a company built on a foundation of Privacy by Design, Neustar is depended upon by the world’s largest corporations to help grow, guard and guide their businesses with the most complete understanding of how to connect people, places and things. Neustar’s unique, accurate and real-time identity system, continuously corroborated through billions of transactions, empowers critical decisions across our clients’ enterprise needs. More information is available at w w w.marketing.neustar ©2018 Neustar, Inc. All rights reserved. All logos, trademarks, servicemarks, registered trademarks, and/or registered servicemarks are owned by Neustar, Inc. All other logos, trademarks, servicemarks, registered trademarks, and registered servicemarks are the property of their respective owners. WP-MS-150377-12.10.2018