philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Quantifying Movie Magic with Google Search

Based on 99 of the top 2012 box office hits, Google identified the following about the way people search for movies:
1) The decision to see a movie is a very highly-considered research process.
2) Trailer-related search trends four weeks out from a movie release provide strong predictive power for opening weekend box office revenue.
3) Opening weekend prediction modeling shows high correlation between search volume/paid click volume and box office revenue.
4) Moviegoers search differently for big movie releases.
5) Forty-eight percent of moviegoers decide what film to watch the day they purchase their ticket.

“In the seven day window prior to a film’s release date, if a film receives 250,000 search queries more than a similar film, the film with more queries is likely to perform up to $4.3M better during opening weekend,” explains Chen. “When looking at search ad click volume, if a film has 20,000 more paid clicks than a similar film, it is expected to bring in up to $7.5M more during opening weekend.”

See the summary article here: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2013/06/quantifying-movie-magic-with-google.html

See the full research report here: http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/quantifying-movie-magic.html