During the summer months, when many traditional broadcast network shows go on hiatus, NBC’s America’s Got Talent is a steady beacon in the relative quiet before the fall TV storm. The variety-esque series, on which performers compete for a $1 million prize, has captured millions of viewers’ attention for years, and it’s remained a pop-cultural touchstone.
B&C partnered with Canvs, the emotion measurement company, to see what people had to say about the latest season, which just wrapped up. Also below: brand and advertising data courtesy of iSpot.tv, and a look at what else AGT viewers were watching this week via Inscape.tv.
According to Canvs, there were 300,714 Emotional Reactions (ERs) around this season of AGT, with the finale this week evoking the largest conversation of the season (31,427 ERs). Across all episodes, the emotions of love, enjoyment and excitement dominated discussion.
In general, host Tyra Banks was one of the most mentioned people of the show, although during the finale episode it was, as you’d expect, winner Darci Lynne Farmer, with her singing ventriloquist act, who was most talked about.
According to TV ad analytics firm iSpot.tv, which has attention and conversion data from millions of smart TVs, a total of 396 brands advertised during the season, running 1,011 commercials over 3,000 times with an estimated spend of $187.2 million. The wireless communications industry dominated, with T-Mobile being the top spender while Verizon and Sprint were also in the top five.
But when it came to attention, telecom brands didn’t score as well as other companies. According to the iSpot Attention Index, ads from mobile carriers were more likely to have interruptions than the average commercial (interruptions include changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV) — perhaps a reflection of their heavy airing schedules. Among those AGT advertisers with high attention indices were TRESemme, JCPenney and Toyota, all of which had ads that were 20-30% less likely to be interrupted than the average.
According to Inscape, viewers who watched the finale of AGT this week were also watching NBC shows like the Nightly News With Lester Holt (earlier) and The Good Place (later). Some viewers, though, were devoted enough to the reality/competition genre to abandon the typical viewer tendency to stick with one network for the night. This subset of viewers switched back and forth between AGT on NBC and Big Brother over on CBS.
Although America’s Got Talent hasn’t been officially renewed for a 13th season yet, the show has already posted a YouTube video inviting people to audition for next year.
