Posted by Donald Nosek on Thu, Feb 25, 2010
American Idol Season 9? February 2010? Sorry, we had to question that ourselves when we looked at the search and social media data following American Idol's Guys Top 12 show. Why?
Show contestant Todrick Hall is running neck and neck with pre-show favorite Andrew (don't call him Andy) Garcia in Google News results. Garcia earned that popularity with a bold, acoustic version of Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" during the Hollywood Auditions. But Hall? We didn't see that coming.
That's the beauty of this American Idol Prediction Project, we never know what we'll find in the data. Turns out Adam Lambert tabbed Hall as his "favorite", on a day when the man that beat him out for American Idol Season 8, Kris Allen, headlines the performances on the results show.
Twitter & Blog Data Predict First Guys to Leave Show
If you read our prior post noting the American Idol Top 12 Girls we think are in trouble in tonight's elimination, you'll know that we wanted to use social media and news data early on this year while the search trend data builds. We narrowed down the list of the two girls that will leave tonight to the three most likely, with another two on the fence. With the guys, it's more difficult to discerne which two will leave American Idol this week.
We would assume that any Guy with both good Twitter mentions and news result lift (over baseline, lowest news results by Michael Lynche) would be safe. While any American Idol Top 12 Guy with low numbers on both would be in trouble. But what do you do with the Guys who have mixed data? Please, look at the chart below and tell us what you think. Here's what we see:
Safe: Andrew Garcia, John Park, Tim Urban, Alex Lambert, Casey James.
Bottom 3 Bound: Jermaine Sellers and Lee Dewyze.
Mixed Data: The rest of them, who knows. To us Tyler Grady and Joe Munoz seem most at risk, followed by Aaron Kelly and Michael Lynche (although their Twitter pull should keep them safe this week).
Our Prediction: Of the two Guys leaving, they'll come from the group of Sellers, Dewyze, Grady and Munoz.
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Posted by David Carpenter on Fri, May 15, 2009
If you're a regular Idol Prediction Project reader you know we've been using Search and Social Media data to predict winners on Idol using: iTunes (purchase intent), Facebook (wall posts), Twitter, Digg and Google Search data... all with pretty good accuracy.
On Saturday May 9, 2009, Aubry, one of our blog contributors made this prediction in response to last week's post on who will be the ‘Challenger to Idol favorite Adam': "If Kris Allen exits this week, Adam will pick up a majority of his votes... Adam seems to be the #2 [favorite] of Kris fans and the young girls are Kradams. If however Gokey goes out, Kris will win because Gokey fans out and out dislike Adam." Could Aubry be right?
It's a lot closer than many people believe
On the May 13 results show Ryan Seacrest said, "More than 88 million votes were cast ... and only 1 million votes separated 1st and 2nd." If it's that close on a three-way race, and you assume that dedicated voters make up the majority of the "voting bloc", then it really comes down to: I) a surging Kris tightening the race; II) Danny Gokey's Swing Voters; III) Adam Lambert backlash. (And of course how the two finalists perform; let's not discount that important element!)
Perfect Storm Part I: "Heartless" from Allen tops "One" from Lambert
Kris is surging. Multiple Social Media and Search data sources confirm that fact. And his performance of Kanye West's "Heartless" Tuesday night may be a big factor. Past strong performances by Allen like his version of Falling Slowly "propelled Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's 2-year-old original into the top 30 on iTunes' download chart," proving through purchase behavior that Allen does have market appeal. If only we could see the download figures for "Heartless"... anyone?
Facebook chatter (as measured by terms like ‘kris allen' and ‘adam lambert' appearing in wall posts) show Kris Allen taking a lead over Lambert for the first time this entire year. The chart below also showcases ‘kanye west' and ‘bono' for perspective on just how popular these two finalists have truly become.
Google Search data showed Adam with a nearly insurmountable lead (3X, 5X, 8X in some cases) up until this week, when tremendous acceleration for search terms featuring ‘Kris Allen' showed that lead severely diminished:
In fact, for the first time since we began measuring "breakout searches" on Google, Kris Allen posted MORE fast rising search terms than Adam (6 vs. 5):
USA Today blogs about how "If radio stations decided the American Idol winner this week, Kris Allen would have the edge. An early look at Mediabase numbers shows that Kris' version of Kanye West's Heartless has had 17 spins on 13 stations this week, barely beating out Adam's U2 cover, One, which 16 stations played once each." But if you total the Top 6 spins/stations, Kris has 22/17 to Adam's 18/18. Here's how the Mediabase numbers look for the week:
- 1. Kris Allen, Heartless: 17 spins/13 stations
- 2. Adam Lambert, One: 16 spins/16 stations
- 3. Kris Allen, Apologize: 5 spins/4 stations
- 4. Danny Gokey, You Are So Beautiful: 5 spins/4 stations
- 5. Danny Gokey, Dance Little Sister: 3 spins/3 stations
- 6. Adam Lambert, Cryin': 2 spins/2 stations
Other Indicators show the race tightening up as well. Globally Adam still maintains a lead over Kris, but the overwhelming distance that once separated them has evaporated:
On Digg, Adam's held a 4.5 to 1 advantage in the first week of May. That lead is down to 3-to-2 as of May 15, 2009 but Adam still holds the edge. Adam maintains leads on Twitter, YouTube and in the Blogosphere as well.
Perfect Storm Part II: Gokey Swing Votes
The conventional wisdom "around town", and our blog contributor Aubry, seems to be that Danny Gokey voters are more likely to cast their votes for Kris than they are for Adam. But we attempted to substantiate that hypothesis with Search and Social Media data and found out that's a pretty tough task - especially since the relevant data is just 2-3 days old. A search through the blogosphere (Google blog search) produced a split: a roughly equal number of "Danny Gokey fan" blogs say they'll vote Kris and Adam.
This original question appeared in the USA Today Blog on April 27th when they speculated that Kris Allen could be a "game changer". "The flamboyant Lambert engenders devotion or distaste, the polar opposite of the more conservative Gokey. Allen's base could shift allegiance to Lambert, who shares his penchant for tinkering with arrangements, or they could align with Gokey, who like Allen serves as a church worship leader. Where those votes go might well determine the outcome."
Perfect Storm Part III: Adam Backlash
USA Today reported on their blog that a backlash may be brewing against Idol's Adam Lambert and cited several factors as to why this could be: 1) Idol producers gave Adam the final performance slot three straight weeks, 2) Simon Cowell's outright prediction of an Adam win on Oprah, and 3) Simon's heavy-handed "instructions" to the Idol audience about not forgetting to vote for the "favorite", Adam. USA Today even characterized the backlash as more of an "anti-judge backlash."
Search data we uncovered seems to underscore this same sentiment. VoteForTheWorst.com has a self-described mission to "support voting for the entertaining contestants who the producers would hate to see win on American Idol"). Sounds like a good place to track negative backlash; so we looked at search engine traffic ending up at the site. Adam Lambert appears as the #2 term, responsible for 87 times more traffic than the first Kris Allen term, which comes in at #273 for that site.
Final "American Idol" finale thoughts
The data shows it's too close to call; not a landslide for Adam as many predicted a few weeks back. In betting terms, Allen is what odds makers would call "a live dog".
Just the beginning?
We searched TweetVolume for clues on the Final Two this week and knew Gokey was in trouble. Then for fun we contrasted Idol with Britain's Got Talent 2009 sensation Susan Boyle. Looking at that data, we couldn't help but wonder when are we going to see the Idol World Cup? Susan Boyle vs. Adam Lambert (or Kris Allen?). Pay-Per-View numbers would be incredible! And TXT volume would probably crash cellular networks worldwide!! Hey Simon, when you use this great idea of ours please remember to make out our royalty checks to "ymarketing, LLC", OK?
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Posted by David Carpenter on Fri, May 08, 2009
If you've followed the Idol Prediction Project and our data download you already know we've been saying Adam Lambert, Danny Gokey and Kris Allen (your Final 3) were the strongest contestants based on the data. We showed weakness in Matt Giraud's search and social media numbers the week before he was cut; and last week this blog showed that Allison had the lowest level of Global Appeal, just prior to her exit.
This week it's a lot tougher to predict what's going to happen. Reason: Beyond Adam, the verdict is split.
Who's #2? The case for Kris
Digg, Google Blog Search and iTunes all point to Kris Allen as the clear challenger to Adam in the finals. When measuring all Diggs (stories, article and blogs deemed worthy of sharing by Digg's 36MM+ users) since April, Kris Allen has a commanding lead...for #2 (94 diggs for Kris vs. 76 diggs for Danny). But both trail Adam's 421 diggs over the same period of time.
A search of blogs mentioning "Kris Allen" turns up nearly 39,300 since April 1 (12,400 since May 1), while "Danny Gokey" tallies 27,600 since April 1 (and 11,600 since May 1). Adam fans: Yes, he's clearly #1 with 53,600 mentions since April 1 (19,200 since May 1). It's interesting to note, though, that Kris mentions on blogs in the month of March actually outnumbered those mentioning Adam.
iTunes is more tricky to gauge. But with the help of compete.com we were able to measure search referrals that resulted in traffic to iTunes.com; and received a welcome assist in the form of a story that MJ broke on MJs Big Blog. MJ's blog clearly shows Kris as the front-runner for the #2 slot*, as measured by the mysteriously appearing/disappearing iTunes popularity bars. (*Behind Adam, who is seemingly miles ahead, each and every week).
Who's #2? The case for Danny
Google Search Traffic points to Danny starting to open up a narrow lead for #2 as of Wednesday, April 6th, from a virtual dead-heat with Kris leading up to Tuesday night. (Adam is #1...by a mile.)
Facebook wall posts give the edge to Danny over Kris by the slightest of margins leading up to Tuesday night and into Wednesday April 6th. (Adam is #1... by a factor of 2-3X.)
Twitter data points to Danny having about a 40% edge this month to date with over 2,900 tweets vs. Kris with just 2,100 tweets. (Adam has over 8,800.)
YouTube site referrals (search queries on search engines that lead to a YouTube visit) have Adam out front with the #16 and #45 overall search queries and 137 distinct terms (words or phrases) leading to videos of Adam. Danny is #2 here with #976 query and 15 overall search terms, and Kris is a distant #3 with the #3,535 query and only 8 overall search terms.
And one final thought: Take a look at the only search terms related to Idol contestants that Google Insights deems a "breakout" for this past week (breakout seems to be defined as a search that's growing at a rate of over 700%):
Who will end up in the finals? Who will win? The latter just maybe entirely dependent on the former, as there may be a swing vote factor to consider. If as the data shows, Adam gets through, the challenger may have a chance to take him down IF the swing votes follow Danny or Kris. However, if Adam gets a large portion of Kris or Danny's swing votes, he may become unbeatable. We'll attempt to predict the swing vote factor using destination referrals prior to the finals.
What do you think? What is the most compelling data source from this week's blog? We'd love to hear from you.
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Posted by David Carpenter on Thu, Apr 30, 2009
If you've followed the Idol Prediction Project you already knew that Matt Giraud's following (as interpreted from Search and Social Media data) was limited at best. So his Wednesday April 29th departure didn't come as a big surprise, given who he was up against. But now things get interesting.
A post on April 17th "Kris Allen Twitter Momentum" pointed to an uprising by Kris Allen, but last week's post showed continuing strength by Adam Lambert (who came in 3rd and 4th place respectively Wednesday night).
For this week we're taking a look at the question of whether any of the remaining Idols have what could be called truly Global Appeal? WHERE does a contestant's fan base appear to be coming from, what's the size, and is it localized or widespread?
To help us decipher the answer to these important questions we've turned back to search engine data, courtesy of Google, and supplemented this week's findings with data from Facebook and Twitter.
Top Findings:
1. Adam Lambert is a global phenomenon. He is more popular in the Philippines and Singapore than in the U.S.
2. Adam's U.S. support is by far the broadest, with pockets of strength ranging across the U.S., coast to coast.
3. Kris Allen enjoys similar popularity in the Philippines.
4. Kris Allen's U.S. support has an epicenter: Little Rock, Arkansas.
5. Danny Gokey's global popularity is more confined to North America, and his domestic reach is headquartered in NY.
6. Allison Iraheta's global reach is similar to Danny's, as is her U.S. popularity (NY state).
7. Search terms "adam idol" and "adam lambert idol" in some cases outnumber searches for "american idol" and outnumber all other contestants combined.
8. The hottest growing idol-related searches last week (Google calls them "breakout") were "American idol disco", "adam lambert disco" and "kris allen disco" - all growing at a rate of 500% or better.
9. Adam Lambert and Kris Allen continue to top Facebook wall posts, as measured on Wednesday April 29th in the morning.
Are you interested in seeing some more of the research facts for yourself? We've made 18 pages of maps, data and trend research available in one PDF, available free for download.
What do you think? Which Idols have global appeal and global potential? Why are Allison and Danny getting so many votes in proportion to the searches being conducted for #3 and #4 finishers Kris and Adam?
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Posted by David Carpenter on Fri, Apr 17, 2009
Idol Prediction Project Post #2 - In our continuing efforts to track and predict the Season 8 American Idol winner using search and social media data, we noticed early signs of a departure from last week's
All-Adam blowout. If you follow Idol fan sites like
USA Today's Idol Meter you noticed that Kris Allen shot into second place this week after being in sixth the week prior. How? While this week's early search and social web data points pointed in many different directions this week, they provide insight into this surge from Kris:
TWITTER: The twittosphere was lit up Wednesday 4/15 with KRIS ALLEN being tweeted 10-to-1 over Adam for a period of time, but it quickly vanished and by Friday 4/17 Adam had resumed his commanding lead. Kris' tweets were apparently "sparked" by this tweet from Season 6 winner Jordin Sparks, "Kris' performance was awesome tonight"). Adam has a 2-1 edge in the number of tweets vs. Danny and Kris, with Lil, Matt, Allison and Anoop trailing in that order.
Tweet Volume 4/15/09 -Did Jordin Sparks comments ignite the Kris tweets?
Tweet Volume 4/17/09 - By the end of the week Adam's popularity righted the twitter ship.
FACEBOOK: Adam maintains a commanding lead, but Lil Rounds is making steady gains the last two weeks. The following chart leverages data from Facebook Lexicon. Setting the index to 1.0 for Danny Gokey's wall post volume from Wednesday, April 1, 2009, Adam has been running 4.9X that volume for two weeks.
DIGG: By far the most diggs are going to a contestant not even on American Idol, Susan Boyle, who appeared on Britain's Got Talent 2009 and completely shocked Simon Cowell (yes, he's a judge over there as well.) She has 337 diggs in the last 24 hours, compared to 7 for "The Hairstyles of Adam Lambert", and two each for "Saving Matt Giraud", Danny Gokey's "Endless Love" and Adam's "Born to be Wild".
SEARCH: Because of Kris Allen's surge on Twitter we dove into discovering where Kris's fans are going online after searching on his name, and came up with the following results. YouTube leads all destinations with 7.5% of traffic, followed by metacafe at 5.1% and Wikipedia at 4.6%:
Scary: In the "shock and disbelief" category, this just in from digg: Only 1 out of 3 of Americans can name the 3 Branches of Government, but 3 out of 4 can name a judge on American Idol.
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