Marketing with Insights: Thinking Better, Not Bigger
How Ranker Insights helps TV marketers reach the people who really care.
The television world has been making the transition from cable boxes and rabbit ears to streaming platforms and Rokus for well over a decade now. But while the way that entertainment companies bring their content to viewers has shifted toward the digital, in many cases, the way that content is marketed to those viewers has not. Many streaming services and production studios are still targeting people via overly broad demographics, spending money putting advertisements for their shows in front of men or women of a certain age or living in a certain region. The digitization of TV has created more specific data on viewers than ever before, yet many major industry players continue to rely on the imprecise methods of another time.
Others rely on information from Google and Facebook to identify and reach their core audiences, but this, too, comes with serious limitations. The key issue here is that much of the data available to marketers is not a strong indicator of a given user’s taste in television — typing in a Google search for a given show or like a Facebook post about it doesn’t necessarily prove that you enjoy it. And if you own the streaming service, there’s no way to tell what their users think about shows outside of their content library.
Ranker Insights provides a critical missing piece for marketers in the entertainment industry by offering a clear view into the tastes of TV fans across all genres and services. Built using over one billion votes cast by pop culture fans on Ranker.com, every piece of Insights data comes from a person voicing an expressly positive or negative opinion. Insights is built to discover niche audiences, allowing marketers to drill down from a given media property to find the individual movies, actors, and characters beloved by that property’s biggest fans. This is the missing piece studios need to plan their digital campaigns, inform their TV ad buys, select brands to partner with, and even make casting decisions with.
In this white paper, we’ll demonstrate how Insights data can be used to make every step in the marketing process more precise and efficient: from identifying your key audiences, to media planning, to creative development, to the execution of digital campaigns.
Audience Definition
Well before a given title is set to be released, it’s the job of marketers to identify the groups of people who are most likely to watch it. Sometimes, that job is less than straightforward.
Take the upcoming animated TV series Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai for example. Who’s the audience for this series? Gremlins and Gremlins 2 were released in 1984 and 1990, respectively, which means the fan base for these movies includes a lot of people over 50 who remember the movies from their 20s and teenage years. But given that this is a kids’ TV show airing on a kids’ TV network, that portion of the fan base isn’t likely to tune in.
The Gremlins fan base is also sure to include younger people who discovered the movies as kids in the 90s and 2000s, many of whom now have kids of their own. That makes “millennial parents” perhaps the most important demographic for Cartoon Network’s new show, as they’ll want to reach young moms and dads who loved the original movies and would therefore find Secrets of the Mogwai a good option for family viewing. Both “Gremlins fans” and “millennial parents” are too broad to be good target audiences — how do you find the crossover? That’s where Insights comes in.
To identify the segment of parents inside this large group of Gremlins fans, we can look through the film tastes of the larger group looking for kids’ content made in the last decade or so. We found that the Gremlins fan base is more likely to be drawn to some of the following kid-friendly, relatively recent movies:
The Incredibles 2 (2018)
Inside Out (2015)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Zootopia (2016)
The Secret Life of Pets (2016)
Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)
The Jungle Book (2016)
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
All these movies came out less than a decade ago and are directed towards young audiences — we can reasonably assume that Gremlins fans who like these movies are either parents or adults who don’t mind consuming high-quality childrens’ content. What do these preferences say about our audience of millennial parents who love Gremlins? We can make a few inferences:
They’re animation fans. Six of these ten movies are animated, and three of them were voted up by Gremlins fans on our list of The Best Animated Films Ever (Inside Out, Into the Spider-Verse, and Zootopia).
They like movies about humans and animals interacting. The Secret Life of Pets, The Jungle Book, and Sonic the Hedgehog all touch on the relationship between humans and animals. That’s a good sign for Cartoon Network, whose upcoming series will cover the adventures of a young kid and his pet Mogwai — they might even act on this information by highlighting the relationship between man and Mogwai in trailers and other visual promotional material.
They’re open to reboots of their favorite media properties. Jumanji, Sonic, Spider-Man, and Incredibles 2 all expand on franchises millennials would have grown up with, meaning they’re open to catching up with old characters and even introducing their kids to them. Again, that’s great news for Cartoon Network and Secrets of the Mogwai.
We can sharpen that understanding by also looking at the recent kids’ movies that Gremlins fans weren’t so hot on. The following movies are less likely to appeal to fans of the original 1984 film than to the average pop culture consumer, according to Ranker Insights:
The Willoughbys (2020)
Frozen 2 (2019)
Trolls (2016)
Toy Story 4 (2019)
The House with the Clock in Its Walls (2018)
Smallfoot (2018)
Home (2015)
Goosebumps (2015)
Finding Dory (2016)
Coco (2017)
Taken together with other findings, we can infer that:
They’re picky about their sequels. It’s clear Gremlins fans aren’t opposed to sequels, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll like a movie just because it belongs to the same franchise as one of their favorites. They’re big fans of Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo, but were apparently disappointed by Toy Story 4 and Finding Dory (both of which were voted down by Gremlins fans on our list of The Most Rewatchable Movies).
They’re not defined by loyalty. Like their favorite recent kids movies, their least favorites come from a variety of different producers and studios. Just because they loved Inside Out didn’t mean they would like Coco.
They’re ambivalent about Jack Black. Gremlins fans didn’t mind the actor so much in School of Rock, Kung Fu Panda, or Jumanji, but they were less excited about his turns in The House with the Clock in Its Walls, Goosebumps, or Goosebumps 2. That inference is supported by Insights, which gives the actor himself an Affinity Score pretty close to 0. Not such a big worry for Cartoon Network, since Jack Black isn’t slated to star in Secrets of the Mogwai.
This information helps marketers to understand who their audiences are ahead of the campaign they’ll need to build as the premiere date gets closer. But as we’ll see, it can also be used to directly determine who the campaign will actually reach.
Planning
The Adult Swim animated sitcom Rick and Morty recently wrapped up its fifth season — a staple of the network, Rick and Morty has built up a solid fan base over the course of five seasons. The problem Adult Swim faces isn’t so much “who makes up our audience,” but rather, “how do we maximize the impact of future campaigns on this audience, and how can it be expanded?”
When answering that question, many marketers turn to Facebook. The social media giant’s Business Manager tool allows marketers to target users for paid social campaigns according to their interests and preferences, rather than relying on dull, imprecise demographic data. Their “Suggested Audiences” tool helpfully recommends different interest-based audiences it thinks your content is more likely to resonate with.
But as nice as the idea behind this tool is, the execution isn’t always so great. Facebook’s Suggested Audiences are often obvious — not to say they’re inaccurate, but that any decent digital marketer might have considered targeting them on their own.
For example, the shows suggested for Rick and Morty are hardly surprising: those who love animated comedy are all but legally required to be fans of The Simpsons and South Park. Adult Swim is perfectly aware that it should be targeting fans of itself, and it takes only slightly more effort to consider that fans of its other very popular programming — Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, Futurama, and American Dad! — should also be included.
Insights data confirms these on-the-nose recommendations, but it offers a far greater depth and breadth of other interest groups Adult Swim might target. For example, there are three Netflix animated shows (BoJack Horseman, Disenchantment, and Big Mouth) that share plenty of fans with Rick and Morty. Facebook only told us about one, and it happens to be the only among them that has come to an end — given that there aren’t any new episodes of BoJack Horseman coming, the show’s audience is less likely to be currently engaging with new content online.
Scrolling down, you’ll also find some more surprising recommendations: Rick and Morty fans are 4X more likely to love HBO’s hour-long dark comedy Barry and Netflix’s sci-fi comedy Russian Doll. With both these shows releasing new seasons starting April 2022, a campaign aimed at their fans would likely find them while actively discussing their favorite TV shows. That maximizes the potential impact of a campaign directed at audiences that Adult Swim likely wouldn’t have been able to find otherwise.
This information isn’t just useful for the planning of digital campaigns: it can help inform TV ad buys, AdWords campaigns, and product tie-ins. The fact that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Archer, and Atlanta are all popular with Rick and Morty fans might inspire Adult Swim to buy some 30-second spots there — maybe alongside the channel’s airings of Interstellar, the movie that members of Rick and Morty’s audience are 3X more likely to love. Insights indicates that Google campaigns directed at people searching for information on the upcoming return of Invader Zim, a show whose fans are 5X more likely to love Rick and Morty, might be a good idea for Adult Swim. And since Rick and Morty has already done commercial partnerships with Wendy’s and Pringles, they might also consider one with Sour Skittles, a snack Insights says fans of the show are 2X more likely to love.
Insights can even help marketers determine which creative to serve to which audience. For instance, we know that Rick and Morty fans are likely to be fans of both Archer and Parks and Recreation. But by visiting the individual Insights pages for Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith, the two fictional protagonists of the show, we learn that while Rick fans are more likely to vote up Sterling Archer as one of The Funniest TV Characters of All Time, the #1 choice of Morty fans is Leslie Knope. That might lead Adult Swim marketers to target Archer audiences with creative where Rick is featured prominently, while Parks & Rec fans would get more Morty-centric graphic material.
Execution
These are all fine ideas, but to put them to the test, we thought we’d run a campaign for a media franchise with new upcoming releases in need of marketing: Harry Potter.
When we were planning this experiment, streamer HBO Max was promoting two different Harry Potter specials: a 20th anniversary cast reunion titled Return to Hogwarts and a Helen Mirren-hosted quiz show called Hogwarts Tournament of Houses. The marketing blitz surrounding these titles was already well underway, meaning that Facebook’s algorithm was already primed to serve Harry Potter content to fans of the franchise, who in turn were already actively discussing the specials and consuming content about them. That represented the perfect opportunity to demonstrate just how effective Insights-driven targeting is compared to targeting done using Facebook’s Suggested Audiences.
We launched paid Facebook campaigns to run traffic ads driving users to four selected pieces of Ranker content about Harry Potter with performance based on ad consumption (arbitrage model), all targeting US-based mobile devices with broad demographic targeting of all genders 18 and up. If we found the traffic acquisition campaigns that leveraged Ranker Insights data performed better than the ones that used more standard, and obvious, targeting selections, we would conclude that our hypothesis was correct. Each of the campaigns used one of the following three targeting selections:
NA — Broad; no targeting of any kind was used.
FB — Standard Facebook Suggested Audiences like “Harry Potter," "Harry Potter universe," and "Harry Potter film series" were used.
RI — Facebook audiences associated with people and media properties (movies and TV shows) that Insights connects to Harry Potter were used. In addition, audiences that Insights found had negative affinities with Harry Potter were excluded from these campaigns.
After delving through Insights’ data on the movies, actors, and characters associated with Harry Potter, we identified the following items as having audiences more likely to be receptive to Harry Potter content:
Popular Mid 2000’s Fantasy Film Franchises — That includes Stardust, Pirates of the Caribbean, Chronicles of Narnia, Shrek, and Lord of the Rings)
Popular Mid-2000’s Fantasy TV Franchises — Including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Hunger Games — Both the movies and the books
The Marvel Cinematic Universe — Especially Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and Doctor Strange
Disney more generally — Especially live-action films like Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, and Saving Mr. Banks.
Johnny Depp
Robin Williams
Emma Watson
Maggie Smith
A lot of these affinities are common sense. Those who grew up watching the Harry Potter films also saw plenty of family-friendly movies that came out around the same time, including Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek, and Lord of the Rings. Other properties, like Marvel, share tonal qualities with Harry Potter, pitting noble heroes in a battle of good against evil where good always triumphs in the end, in contrast with more pessimistic franchises like A Series of Unfortunate Events and the DC Comic Universe. But while plenty of marketers might infer that fans of Harry Potter might also like Doctor Strange, Insights offers hard, quantitative evidence of that inference, evidence that justifies spending a little more to reach Harry Potter fans they might have otherwise ignored.
We targeted users that Facebook identified as fans of each of these shows, movies, books, and people in addition to those that belonged to more obvious Harry Potter audiences. But in some cases, we also excluded certain audiences associated with items that Insights found Harry Potter fans statistically less likely to enjoy.
Delving through the negative affinities associated with the Harry Potter movies, actors, and characters, we found a few consistent themes that allowed us to exclude certain audiences on Facebook:
Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal
Horror movies — The Child’s Play franchise in particular
Classic film more broadly — Any movie made before 1995 that isn’t a certified cultural touchstone wasn’t likely to be a hit with these audiences.
DC Comics — Movies and TV shows about Superman, Wonder Woman, and Shazam tended to score low with Harry Potter fans, whether animated or live-action.
Tom Hanks — Fans are more or less ambivalent about both the actor and his most popular movies.
Musicals
Rom-Coms
Again, many of these findings are common sense: The Dark Crystal was the fantasy fare of another generation, making it poor competition in the minds of millennials. And since Harry Potter is a heroic franchise with an optimistic outlook, it makes sense that the dark and dreary outlook of horror movies and many DC Comic stories don’t appeal to these audiences.
Some of these other discoveries aren’t quite as intuitive, however. Dark as they are, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Batman movies are tremendously popular across virtually all demographics on Ranker, so it’s surprising to see that Harry Potter fans, a very broad audience, are relatively uninterested in it. Their dislike of Tom Hanks is even more surprising — Hanks is consistently voted to the top of Ranker lists celebrating the best and most beloved figures in Hollywood, and is remembered by many millennials for his role in Toy Story. In fact, the few Tom Hanks movies that Harry Potter fans do tend to enjoy, like Saving Mr. Banks and The Da Vinci Code, are seen by many Hanks fans as some of his more mediocre work.
But we trusted what Insights told us and excluded Facebook users in Suggested Audiences like “Tom Hanks” and “Forrest Gump.” In this way, the third targeting selection (RI) both expanded on and narrowed the second selection (FB), reaching out to new audiences and eliminating others. Here’s what we found:
We were able to successfully prove our hypothesis: Insights-based targeting (RI) had the strongest performance of all three targeting selections!
Leads (defined as the number of users who consumed 10+ ad impressions post-click) were 7X higher for Insights-based targeting over standard interest targeting (FB
CPL was 7.3% lower when compared to the campaign using broad targeting (NA)
CPL was 21.4% lower when compared to the campaign using standard interest targeting (FB)
While the RI ad sets had higher CPMs, they also had higher CTRs, offsetting the higher cost and producing favorable CPCs
