Digital Audience Ratings: ‘Pixels’ Parades 35 Years Of Pac-Man
Each week Variety publishes ListenFirst Digital Audience Ratings (DAR) – Film, a measurement of fan engagement across all the major digital platforms as it relates to film (see the TV version here). Provided by ListenFirst Media, DAR – Film measures what entertainment content is resonating most across Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia combined. For more on the methodology behind DAR, scroll to the bottom of the article.
 Digital Audience Ratings (DAR) – Film | ||||||
Weekly Top 5 | Wednesday May 20, 2015 – Tuesday May 26, 2015 | |||||
RANK | LAST WEEK | FILM | RATING(000) | |||
1 |  | – |  | 6,281 |  | |
2 | | – |  | 5,830 |  | |
3 | | – |  | Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials | 5,064 | |
4 | | – |  | 4,993 | | |
5 |  | 1 |  | 4,199 | ||
– |
Key | |
| First time on the chart |
| Pinnacle Rank |
– |
Trending | Wednesday May 20, 2015 – Tuesday May 26, 2015 | ||||
FILM | RATING(000) | % CHANGE | |||
 | The Gallows | 963 | +8,350% | ||
 | 1,537 | +5,461% | |||
 | 205 | +4,580% | |||
Insights:
The DAR-Film leaderboard got a makeover this week, dropping regulars to make room for newcomers “Inside Out,” “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials,” and “We Are Your Friends,” which all released trailers. “Inside Out” was the most engaging film on YouTube, debuting at the top of the charts just weeks before hitting theaters. The ‘Disgust & Anger Clip’ brought in fresh YouTube activity and also encouraged viewership on older content. Zac Efron lured fans to YouTube to catch a glimpse of his role in “We Are Your Friends,” while “Maze Runner” fans raced to Facebook to view the trailer for the newest installment of the hit series.
“Pixels” returned to the DAR-Film leaderboard this week for the first time since its first trailer released back in March. The film had a big week on social, which included a new trailer on 5/19 followed by a week dedicated to a global celebration of Pac Man’s 35th anniversary on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube.
“Mad Max” dropped down the DAR-Film leaderboard following the second weekend in theaters, but there was no lack of interest over the week. Fans fled straight to Wikipedia to research the new release, which ranked as the top film on Wikipedia this week. Fellow Warner Bros. films “The Gallows,” “Black Mass,” and “Point Break” consumed the trending leaderboard this week after ramping up campaigns with new content releases.
Jason Klein is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of ListenFirst Media, a data and analytics company providing insights for brands. ListenFirst aggregates data streams from a wide range of digital, social, and traditional marketing sources to help brands optimize business performance.
Methodology:
ListenFirst Digital Audience Ratings (DAR) – Film are a raw aggregate of daily engagements based on owned, earned and organic consumer behavior on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Wikipedia and YouTube. These engagements encompass metrics pertaining to audience growth, page/profile views, page-level and post-level interactions, hashtag volume and Wikipedia page views for all film pages (which provides a proxy for organic search volume).
Organic conversation volume is calculated based on the use of official hashtags, as well as those hashtags submitted directly from distributors. Only hashtags where conversation can be isolated to a specific film are included in the rating.
The Variety Weekly Top 5 and Trending leaderboards for film represent the 7-day (Wednesday – Tuesday) sum total of DAR for all US Domestic Films that have been publicly announced and slated for a commercial theatrical release. Films are rated daily from initial public announcement through 4 weeks post home entertainment street date. Festival films and other films not slated for a commercial theatrical release are excluded from this ranking cohort but available to be rated directly by ListenFirst Media.
The Trending leaderboard surfaces the three films that tracked the largest relative growth in DAR (from the previous 7-day measurement period), and are also in the top 25% based on absolute DAR.
ListenFirst monitors the official digital account owned by the film on each aforementioned platform (except for Wikipedia, where the title-specific profile is considered official). Only the U.S. version of a film’s digital presence is monitored; for platforms that support regional profiles like Facebook, the “Global” profile is considered the U.S. profile. Only profiles that can be attributed to the specific film contribute to the rating (i.e. engagements that happen on the profile facebook.com/ArgoMovie are tracked, while engagements that happen on facebook.com/WarnerBrosPictures are not). For YouTube, in addition to any film-specific presence, content related to the film in question that originated on the parent company’s official YouTube channel is considered.
For other questions pertaining to methodology, contact ListenFirst Media.
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