We recently took a look at social video trends for three upcoming broadcast TV shows, and today (using data from Tubular Labs), we’re turning the spotlight on streaming services to examine three more high-profile shows: Netflix’s The Witcher, Hulu’s Looking for Alaska, and Amazon’s Carnival Row. And since shows’ actors can play a crucial role in generating audience excitement, we’ve also included insights from CreatorIQ, an influencer platform that helps companies run brand ambassador campaigns with content creators, to explore a key star from each show.
Netflix kicked off its campaign for monsters-and-magic series The Witcher in earnest this summer with a global push that included parent, country-specific, and show-specific accounts across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
In particular, the streaming giant prioritized posting videos on Facebook (36) compared to YouTube (24), Twitter (9), and Instagram (5) — but despite that, it’s The Witcher’s official teaser on YouTube that’s generated the most views so far: 18.9 million since it was uploaded on July 19, 16.1 million of which occurred in the first seven days, according to Tubular’s V7 rating. The most-watched video targeted to another country was the one posted to Netflix Brasil’s YouTube channel (1.6 million views, with a V7 rating of 1.5 million).
Looking at the show-specific accounts, they’ve been used to post mini clips and teaser reactions, but, understandably, none of those videos have racked up anywhere near the views from the Netflix parent accounts.
It’s also worth mentioning that Netflix was teasing the new series long before July. In fact, the first clips came out on October 31 of last year, and were posted to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram — Netflix didn’t use YouTube for The Witcher promos until July.
Meanwhile, Hulu has taken a more modest approach to promoting its adaptation of John Green’s debut novel Looking for Alaska on its parent account, which has posted the official teaser only to YouTube (293K views with a V7 rating of 189K) and Facebook (77.9K views with a V7 rating of 68.6K). On Instagram, there’s only a playful video with the show’s stars looking for each other in a hall.
Its show-specific accounts have been most active with video on Instagram, where the official teaser as well as quick snippets introducing the characters can be viewed. But it’s the teaser on Twitter that’s garnered the most views (2.7 million).
As for Carnival Row, although Amazon Prime Video has posted more videos about the fantasy series to YouTube (11) than Facebook (7) and Instagram (1), the “Prologue: Vignette” video on Facebook racked up the most views: 7.4 million since it was posted on July 20, with 5.1 million views occurring in the first week, according to Tubular’s V7 rating. In comparison, the official trailer posted to YouTube has generated 5.4 million views with a V7 rating of 4.8 million.
Amazon has created show-specific accounts for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, with the Twitter videos resulting in the most views so far — such as this one, which has generated 5.2 million views since it was tweeted Aug. 6.
Social Audience Demographics of the Stars
Netflix tapped man of steel Henry Cavill for the starring role of Geralt in The Witcher, an announcement made last year. Since then, Cavill has been promoting the series on Facebook and Instagram with various videos, including a behind-the-scenes clip from last fall that’s generated over 2.5 million views on Instagram. The official teaser Cavill posted to Instagram on July 19 has generated nearly as many views (2.2 million) in far less time as audience excitement heats up.
Cavill has a social audience of 9.1 million, with the bulk coming from Instagram (7.8 million), where he has an engagement rate of 7.02%, which CreatorIQ considers “mainstream.” His audience skews ever-so-slightly male, with half between the ages of 18 and 24. And although he hails from the U.K., 21% of his audience comes from the U.S., and 16% is from Brazil.
Hulu’s Looking for Alaska will star Kristine Froseth (Netflix’s Sierra Burgess is a Loser) as the title character Alaska Young. Nearly all of her social audience comes from
Instagram, where she has 1.1 million followers and a solid engagement rate of 10.53%, according to CreatorIQ. Although she’s posted multiple pictures promoting the show, the only Looking for Alaska-related video she’s published so far is the teaser, which has generated 596K views since it was posted on July 26.Froseth’s audience is overwhelmingly female (81%), with 54% in the 18 to 24 age group. The U.S. and Brazil are nearly tied for audience location — 14% and 13%, respectively.
Orlando Bloom of The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises will play Rycroft Philostrate in Amazon’s newly-premiered (and already renewed) Carnival Row. Bloom has a Facebook page with over one million likes, but he’s most active on Instagram, where he treats his 2.7 million followers to regular updates (his Instagram engagement rate is a mainstream 4.29%). He’s mixed up the type of promotions he posts for Carnival Row, using everything from teaser trailers to video interviews to generate fan excitement. He started the hype long ago, too, posting quick stunt rehearsal videos as far back as October 2017.
His audience is 72% female and, notably, 30% are under the age of 18. And although he’s British, 54% of his followers come from the U.S.
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