Does Online Interest = Ratings? A Tale of Two Late-Night Legends

: How do planned promotions and juicy scandals affect search interest? And what’s the correlation between searchers and viewers?

There are rivalries and then there are rivalries. Jay Leno and David Letterman have been duking it out on the late-night stage for the better part of two decades – and while NBC’s Leno might have been the ratings leader, it was hard to discuss his success without mentioning his equally comedic counterpart at CBS. Leno and Letterman no longer compete in the same time slot, yet public interest and controversy around the two hosts is seemingly stronger than ever.

As marketers, we were curious to see if a relationship exists between online interest, as measured by search volume, and viewership for the late night TV warriors. With all the Leno and Letterman news events in the past month – premieres, celebrity apologies, presidential visits, sex scandals – what were the top drivers of search queries? And did ratings follow suit?

We’ve provided a full report after the jump. Here are the key takeaways from our research:

Fluctuations in ratings (sales, engagement, etc.) do not always mirror search trends.
Breaking news events such as a sex scandals trump scheduled Presidential visits when it comes to generating interest.
Which types of events generate ratings? Marketing supported season premieres win over the scandals.
Brands should be cognizant of online interest; Search InformedSM Research and conversation monitoring can help shape smarter marketing decisions.

From The Tonight Show to The Jay Leno Show
Leno made waves with his return to NBC and his resurrection on The Jay Leno Show. After the premiere, which brought in more than 18 million viewers, there was a corresponding surge in “Leno” searches in Google; however, search volume fell sharply shortly thereafter.

Nonetheless, the drop in total viewership did not fall as dramatically as search queries did, and the show sustained an average viewership of approximately 5.7 million over the three weeks following premiere week.

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Letterman: From Presidential Visits to Intern Trysts
Letterman opened his season on Monday, Sep. 21 with his highest rating in four years thanks to a visit from President Obama (7.2 million viewers). Former President Clinton joined Dave on the subsequent night helping the Late Show achieve one of the most watched Tuesday night shows (5.145 million viewers) since Sep.19, 1995 (5.156 million viewers).

Although these highly promoted season-starters provided a significant spike in interest on the engines, searches for “Letterman” would reach fever pitch on Oct.2 when news broke of Letterman’s affair with an intern. “Letterman” searches after the scandal broke even surpassed the impressive number of “Leno” searches from Jay’s premiere week.

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What did all this search interest do for Dave’s ratings?

Approximately 5.9 million people tuned into watch Letterman break the news of the alleged extortion attempt, and on Letterman’s first show after the story broke, the Late Show received 5.7 million viewers. While the scandal generated a nice ratings spike, the increase did not mirror the surge in search interest for “Letterman.” Ratings did not quite reach the number of viewers attained for his premiere with President Obama or any of Leno’s recent top ratings.

What does this mean for marketers?
Here is some advice for all marketers based on our late-night analysis:

Use search data to inform ways to capitalize on buzz. To capitalize on the interest driven by marketing-fueled product launches (or re-launches), marketers can monitor search trends and analyze their online traffic to discover real-time insights that can be used to optimize paid search creative and other promotional messaging.
Keep it professional. Scandals can drive search interest for the product or brand, but may not necessarily have the same magnitude of change on ratings or sales. Content and quality (e.g. popular or iconic personalities on these shows) drive real results over longer periods of time.
Search and online chatter can reveal consumer sentiment around scandals. When a scandal comes to light, online chatter and interest spike. Marketers can measure public sentiment via buzz and search analysis to develop an appropriate response strategy that will help protect the brand and make the most of the situation.

Search trend analysis is a useful way to measure online interest for a brand, product or event. While it cannot be used as a hard-and-fast predictive measure for ratings (sales, engagement, etc.), information gleaned from the engines can be used in conjunction with other forms of Search Informed Research and online buzz analysis to garner customer insights and craft strategies to beat the competition.

- John Cole, Customer Insights Analyst at 360i