Audience tracking surveys are increasingly failing to predict box office, notes Deadline.com’s Anita Busch, who catalogs a succession of recent wrong calls. For example, tracking surveys predicted roughly $20 million in domestic box office for the three-day premiere weekend for The Weinstein Co.’s young-adult “The Giver,” which ended up with just $12.3 million.
That’s a whopping 38.5% deviation from the forecast.
As book “Marketing to Moviegoers: Third Edition” points out, no more than a 20% margin of error is expected. Film distributors use tracking information to help fine tune creative messages of movie marketing campaigns and help plan ad spending.
“Although the industry follows tracking surveys very closely because they usually are correct,” says “Marketing to Moviegoers”, “thus providing valuable marketing intelligence, instances where they are off are growing. Moviegoer habits are changing in this digital age, which makes recruiting survey participants difficult.”
Related content:
Leave a Reply