Digital Audience Ratings: ‘Star Wars’ Forces Its Way to the Top Amidst Superhero Showdown
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 Apr 15, 2015 – Tuesday Apr 21, 2015 | |||||
RANK | LAST WEEK | FILM | RATING(000) | |||
1 |  | – |  | 47,213 |  | |
2 | | – |  | 28,390 |  | |
3 |  | 2 |  | 11,949 | ||
4 |  | – |  | Jurassic World | 8,216 | |
5 | | 3 |  | Furious 7 | 6,731 | |
– |
Key | |
| First time on the chart |
| Pinnacle Rank |
– |
Trending | Wednesday Apr 15, 2015 – Tuesday Apr 21, 2015 | ||||
FILM | RATING(000) | % CHANGE | |||
| Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice | 28,390 | +34,068% | ||
 | The Gallows | 148 | +12,474% | ||
 | 531 | +6,562% | |||
Insights:
A second wave of summer releases dropped new trailers over the week to claim spots on the DAR-Film leaderboard. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” crushed contenders across social this week after dropping a new teaser trailer. The 21st century version of the iconic series topped the DAR-Film leaderboards and outperformed all other titles on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Google+.
The new “Star Wars” trailer was also joined by releases for “Batman v Superman” and “Jurassic World” during this crowded week of launches. “Batman v Superman” debuted on the DAR-Film leaderboard at No. 2 and topped trending titles after an online leak expedited the release of the teaser trailer. “Jurassic World” returned to the charts with a series of posters counting down to Tuesday’s global trailer launch on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Regulars “Furious 7” and “Avengers” remained on the DAR-Film leaderboard for the 8th consecutive week. “Avengers” has maintained a top spot since the release of trailer 3 thanks to continuous content releases, including numerous new clips this week. Following its 3rd weekend in theaters, “Furious 7” dropped from 1st to 5th on the leaderboard, making room for summer releases, but remaining No. 1 on both Facebook and at the box office for the 3rd week in a row.
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.
Related stories
Nick Kroll at 'Adult Beginners' Premiere: 'My Character Is Messy'
Digital Audience Ratings: 'Furious 7' Speeds to Top, 'Insurgent' Ignites Instagram
Film Review: 'Adult Beginners'
Get more from Variety and Variety411: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter
