Battle of the Brands: IPL vs Netflix

It’s that time of the year again – we all know what this means. IPL is just around the corner. Despite all odds – a global pandemic, travel restrictions and much more – IPL 2020 is finally happening, albeit in the UAE. And like last year, we want to look at a slightly different battle – the battle of TV airspace, where we compare IPL and Netflix. Now, the world of OTT has basically exploded in India – especially since Covid. So who will win this battle? Let’s see what the social indicators have to say.

 

Talkwalker, a social media analytics company, based in Luxembourg, provides information on the using their platform. Talkwalker Analytics analyses the performance of mentions all over the internet and provides key metrics such as engagement, related themes, demographic data, geographic data and influencer data. 

 

Mentions: 

 

Looking at data over the last three months, we can see that the IPL buzz has been on the rise constantly, with the peak happening now – which corresponds to Harbhajan Singh’s announcement that he won’t be playing in this season’s IPL. Of course, most of the other viral results come from cricketers and IPL players. The buzz, as you can see, has been almost constant. Interest has temporarily diminished in Netflix – earlier the peak corresponded with a conversation around Netflix- only movie releases.

 

In this edition, we’d also quickly like to take a look at the kind of other KPIs that can be used to better understand mentions. For instance, sentiment analysis and engagement are two more KPIs that you can use to get a better understanding of mentions. In fact, it may just happen that you have a huge number of mentions, but the sentiment is negative, in which case, this is not a good thing. Thus, it’s important to look at these KPIs collectively, while putting together your social media report.

 

Demographics: 

 

Who’s talking about IPL vs Netflix? Though the target audience for both of these mega-brands is universal, it always helps when brand managers have a better perspective of who they are selling to. In this case, it’s mostly male millenials – looking at the data. Netflix though has double the percentage of the female demographic as compared to IPL. 

 

Again, to get a better idea of the demographic profile, this information should be combined with data pertaining to languages and even interested if that is available. Languages, especially would be an important KPI for the Indian market. 

 

Themes

 

What is the buzz about? Well, no surprise really, the buzz about IPL is about IPL and cricket! Apart from that, we can see UAE prominently featured as well as the BCCI and various team names. For Netflix, the most popular themes are movies, series, people etc. We also see the name of a competitor there. And definitely, since the buzz about IPL is more than 2X that of Netflix, we can see that they have the lion’s share of themes too.

 

Themes become useful when they are studied with hashtags – this is mainly because you can identify emerging themes and hashtags which can help you plan your next campaigns.

 

Media:

 

Where is the buzz happening? It’s always important to know where the buzz is taking place. Why? Because as a marketer, it’s important to figure out where your audience is and to take control of the conversation there. In the case of both IPL and Netflix, Twitter is the star of the show – no surprises there! But with the start of the tournament, there will definitely be an interesting mix of channels. It’s also important to note that more people are talking about IPL than about Netflix.

 

While putting together a social media report, there are always some KPIs ( like some of the ones illustrated here) that are of prime importance – but while those are really the pillars, it’s important to not ignore the metrics that help you understand them better to have a social media report that actually is as accurate as can be.