There was much discussion this week about the low ratings for the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. But as usual, the topline numbers don’t tell the whole story. We dig into the details and unearthed some useful insights. This week, we’re looking at
- Beauty Influencers > Brands
- Venom Takes a Windowed Approach
- Saturday Night Live Numbers
Beauty Influencers Beat Brands
Are you following trends, or driving them?
Influencers take more risks than brands and therefore tend to be the trend drivers. They put out more content, faster, and as a result, get more views.
Our report finds that the vast majority of beauty-themed video content viewers are watching and engaging with comes from influencers rather than brands.
- Influencers: 39.6 billion views + 8.5k engagements per video
- Brands: 3 billion views + 3.1k engagements per video
- Media: 1.6b views + 6.4k engagements per video
Influencers drove a 34% increase in beauty-related video views in the 12 months ended July 2021 over the year prior.
Short-form content emerging as the biggest opportunity for brands seeking beauty influencer partnerships. Videos 30 seconds or less generate the most views (over 1 million) and second-most engagements (around 15k), while videos 30-60 seconds long get the second most views (over 800k) and most engagements (nearly 20k). Views and engagements for videos over 1-minute drop dramatically, to less than 250k views, and around 5,000 engagements. This decline continues through all videos +1 minute.
Download the full report here for more.
“Venom” (At Least Temporarily) Stops Box Office Carnage
Venom: Let There Be Carnage scored a $90.1 million domestic debut, the largest opening weekend haul in the post-pandemic era, beating out both of this year’s Marvel Cinematic Universe movies — Black Widow ($80.4m) and Shang-Chi: The Legend of the 10 Rings ($75.4m).
While technically a Marvel character, the Venom films are part of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Spider-Man Universe, not the MCU. Sony is a vocal defender of the theatrical release window strategy and it took a similar windowing approach across multiple platforms to its social video promotion in advance of the film’s Oct. 1 release.
The campaign started on Facebook, where the studio dropped the first two official trailers, one on May 11 (2.6m views on day 1), and another on Aug. 3 (2.4m views on day 1). Then, on Sept. 16, it moved to Twitter, with a six-second teaser clip that drew 1.9m views on the first day. Finally, the day before release, Sony shifted to YouTube with a trailer heavily highlighting the new song “Last One Standing” by Skylar Grey, which generated another 1.1 million views on day 1.
Not only is the song the movie’s closing credits track, but it features a range of collaborators including Eminem… who performed the title song “Venom” for the original 2018 movie. The official audio video of the song on Eminem’s official Vevo YouTube page (which is just a banner advertising the movie with the song playing in the background), generated another 5.6 million views and was the No. 1 most-viewed video on Eminem’s page the day before the movie’s release.
Saturday Night Live—Behind The Numbers
Saturday Night Live’s season premiere on Oct. 2 notched its all-time lowest ratings ever in terms of live cable viewership. And the news isn’t that much better for social video. Sunday’s total views for the official SNL YouTube page topped 9.8 million immediately following the premiere, with another 10.6 million coming in on Monday.
By way of comparison, the 2020 season premiere drew 19.8 million views on SNL’s YouTube page after it aired, with 16.7 million views the following Monday. And in 2019, post-premiere YouTube views totaled 15.9 million on Sunday and 15 million on Monday.
But a deeper look at the content itself helps explain peaks and valleys of SNL’s viewer history. For instance, SNL’s single biggest day for views in the last three years was Nov. 8, 2020, with 38 million. Ring a bell? That was the first episode following the highly contentious 2020 presidential election, where President Biden wasn’t named the winner until that Friday.
The second-most views of the timeframe came on Dec. 23, immediately following Eddie Murphy’s return to the show, drawing over 30 million views. And in third is April 26, 2020, with nearly 25 million viewers turning to YouTube to watch how the sketch show handled the national pandemic lockdown.
In terms of engagement, the largest single-day spike was Nov. 8, 2020, again right after the election, with 897k. Elon Musk’s guest appearance drove the second highest day for engagements on May 9, 2021, with 692k. And K-pop boy band BTS’ performance drew 675k engagements on April 14, 2019.
What did the 2021 season premiere have to work with? Partisan infighting around the debt ceiling and infrastructure bill negotiations and an impersonation of Krysten Sinema. We’ll see if and how things evolve as this season continues.
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