The Nielsen Company's Guide to the Academy AwardsNEW YORK, Feb. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Several Nielsen businesses -- including Nielsen EDI, Nielsen SoundScan, Nielsen BookScan, Nielsen Media Research, Nielsen Monitor-Plus, Nielsen//NetRatings, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, and Scarborough Research -- today released a wide range of consumer and media information illustrating the enormous impact that the Academy Awards has on the U.S. As the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences prepares to announce the Oscar winners in Hollywood, California on February 25, Nielsen has combined data on box-office receipts, album sales, television ratings, advertising trends, Internet measurement, and lifestyle information of Academy Award nominees from this year and past years. Among the findings:
ResearchBox Office Sales (Nielsen EDI)How much of an impact do Academy Award nominations have on the distribution and ticket sales for the nominated movies? Comparing the number of theatres showing each movie and ticket sales before and after the nominations were announced on January 23rd shows significant increases in most cases. NUMBER OF THEATRES Open Date Nominated Movie Gross Box Office Sales DVD Sales (Nielsen VideoScan)The Best Picture award winner of 2006 Crash saw a 27.3% lift in DVD unit sales in the 7-weeks after it was nominated. Crash also saw a 143% increase in DVD unit sales in the 7-weeks after it won Best Picture (compared to the 7- weeks before its Oscar win). This year, most nominated movies were not available on DVD by the time the Academy announced its nominations. Music Sales (Nielsen SoundScan and Analysis by Billboard's Geoff Mayfield)If sales of the single-disc Dreamgirls soundtrack were combined with those of the two-disc deluxe version, it would be the second best selling album of 2007 with 432,000 copies sold since the beginning of the year through Feb. 11, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The single-disc version spent two weeks at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 and has sold 734,000 copies since its Dec. 5 release, 348,000 of those since the start of this year. The deluxe version has scanned another 162,000 since it reached stores Dec. 5. Three of this year's Original Song nominees appear on the Dreamgirls albums. This year nominees, ranked by digital sales to date: The best selling soundtrack in Nielsen SoundScan history: The Bodyguard, selling 11.8 million since its release, Nov. 10, 1992. In some years, the Oscars have a negligible impact on sales. However, if it's a year when Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young each perform songs from Philadelphia, the impact on that album can be stunning. In 1994, that soundtrack more than doubled after the Oscars (from 32,000 to 77,000 copies), which translated into a 34-12 jump on The Billboard 200. Last year, after Gustavo Santaolalla won for Original Score, the soundtrack from Brokeback Mountain saw a 61% gain, good for a 148-83 jump on The Billboard 200, while Hustle & Flow, with the winning song by Three 6 Mafia, posted the chart's largest percentage gain, as a 77% increase took that soundtrack 143-73. Many of the movies nominated for the top categories, were based, or at least in part, on a book or a book was developed in conjunction with the movie. Nielsen BookScan, which covers 75% of sales in the book industry, took a look at sales of books that are related to the nominated movies. The chart below compares 2007 sales versus sales since each title's release date. All data below includes sales for hard and paperback formats. SALES OF BOOKS RELATED TO NOMINATED MOVIESRelease to *Includes both hardcover and paperback editions. +Includes 2007 sales data through 2/4/2007. ^Nielsen BookScan began collecting data in January 2001; as the earliest release of this title was before this date, the total sales figure represents sales from 2001-present. #Earliest publication date of title. TV Viewership (Nielsen Media Research)In 2006, an average of 39 million Americans tuned in to the ABC Network to watch the Academy Awards. The event averaged a 23.1% household rating, down slightly from the previous years. Over the past ten years, the most-watched Academy Award broadcast was in 1998 when Titanic was voted Best Picture, which drew 55 million viewers for an average household rating of 34.9%. The lowest rated in recent years was the 2003 Academy Awards when Chicago was voted Best Picture, with only 20 percent of U.S. homes tuned into the telecast. In local U.S. markets, the highest overall local rating in 2006 -- at nearly 37% -- was in New York. The second largest local TV audience, with an average of 34%, was in Chicago. (See TV Ratings chart at right -- note that local TV ratings are based on Live+7). Television RatingsAverage Viewers on ABC Network Advertising Trends (Nielsen Monitor-Plus)Nielsen Monitor-Plus, the global advertising intelligence service of Nielsen Media Research analyzed ad spending for the movies that have been nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Actor. Over $83 million was spent on advertising in the U.S. for the Best Motion Picture nominees from January - November 2006. Almost half was spent on The Departed, which was also nominated for Best Director. Spending for Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen, and Babel ranged from $11.9 to $16.4 million, while Letters from Iwo Jima had no advertising activity at all in the U.S. Advertising spending for the movies in the Best Director category totaled $94.4 million. Once again, The Departed led the way with over $40 million in advertising dollars spent. BEST PICTURE AND BEST DIRECTOR AD SPENDINGMotion Picture Jan 2006-Nov 2006 $ Nomination Received Best Actress and Best ActorThe movies nominated in the Best Actress category collectively spent $40.5 million in advertising dollars in January - November of last year. The Devil Wears Prada had more than half of the spending at $22.3 million. Volver and Notes on a Scandal had smaller ad budgets, each spending under $1 million. BEST ACTRESS AD SPENDING BEST ACTOR AD SPENDINGMotion Picture Jan 2006- Nomination Nominee Top Advertisers During the 2006 TelecastThe 2006 Academy Award ceremony had a total of 24 1/2 commercial minutes during the televised broadcast on ABC Network, with General Motors airing 4 minutes of commercials (spending a total of $13.17 million). Instead of focusing on Cadillac as it has in years past, in 2006 GM also promoted its Hummer, Saab, and Yukon vehicles. L'Oreal, which became a major advertiser in 2005, aired 3 1/2 minutes of ads in 2006, double the amount than the year before. L'Oreal spent $11.53 million in 2006. The third largest advertiser in 2006 was Coca-Cola, which replaced Pepsi as the exclusive soft drink company. Coca-Cola spent $9.8 million to advertise their Diet Coke and Tab brands for 3 minutes. Total advertising revenue for the event was $80.7 million. Average Cost for a 30-second CommercialThe cost for a 30-second commercial has increased 27.5% over the five-year period since 2002 ($1.29 million in 2002 to $1.65 million in 2006). Although the cost per commercial varies, total advertising expenditures during the program shows a steady increase. Academy Avg Cost Per Winner of Best Picture Online Usage (Nielsen//NetRatings)Traffic to the three major Oscar Web sites (oscar.movies.yahoo.com, oscar.com and oscars.org) reached 1.7 million unique visitors on the day of the awards ceremony last year according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The next day, the combined Web traffic to these sites increased 60 percent to 2.7 million. Weekly unique visitors to these three Web sites grew 171 percent in the week ending in Oscar night, up to 2.8 million from 1.0 million the week before. In 2006 Oscar.com grew 39 percent year over year, from an Oscar week unique audience of 518,000 to 720,000. Nielsen BuzzMetrics audits Internet brand buzz before, during and after the Academy Awards, coming from its database of approximately 40 million blogs. BuzzMetrics provides advertisers with comprehensive data and deep insight around stickiness, virality and even the popularity of the event and the nominees. The following chart shows the blog buzz for this year's Best Actor and Actress nominees. Among all Oscar related buzz where the top actors were referenced, Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker were most dominant in online conversation on weblogs relative to their fellow actors. Peter O'Toole was least buzzworthy. BLOG BUZZ ONLINEInternet Buzz in Lifestyle Characteristics of Academy Award Watcher (Scarborough Research)Scarborough Research, a media and marketing service which measures lifestyle behaviors of American consumers, found that Academy Award watchers are 16% more likely to be female than the national average, and men are 17% less likely to have watched the Academy Awards last year. More than half (57%) of those who have watched the Awards ceremony on TV last year are married, while nearly one-quarter (24%) are single or never married. Thirty-five percent of all Academy Award watchers typically watch national/network news, and are 36% more likely to watch news magazines. The fact that they are 'news savvy' may further suggest their participation and involvement with voting and politics. 83% of all Academy Award watchers are registered to vote and 76% always vote in presidential elections. The political affiliations of Academy Award watchers is 35% Democrat, 28% Republican, 9% Independent, 9% Independent but feel closer to Democrat, 6% Independent but feel closer to Republican and 14% are not affiliated with any party. About The Nielsen Company Source: The Nielsen Company Entertainment Magazine2007 Film Entertainment Magazine / EMOL.org. All rights reserved. | Film Entertainment Magazine
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