For the past few years, I have not only been a Sirius Satellite Radio subscriber, but also one of its biggest fans. Sirius replaced the unmanageable amount of mix CD’s that littered my car and put all the music and entertainment in one small piece of equipment. Sirius has also changed the way I listen to music at work. On in the background all day, Sirius Internet Radio provides me with the soundtrack to my daily life. While some days call for an upbeat tempo with Sirius Hits 1 and some days require a more mellow choice like Cinemagic, my channel of choice is Howard 100. And who can blame me - the home of chaotic entertainment that is amusing day after day, providing everything from the ‘Wack Pack’ to Robin’s News. I wanted to know if others shared in my loyalty to Howard 100 when listening to Sirius Internet Radio, and if not, what are the subscribers listening to?

To do this, I looked at the population of Sirius Internet Radio listeners and then analyzed what channels they are tuning into during a month. Keep in mind that one listener can fall into multiple buckets throughout the month. Here’s what I found:

• Howard is King: 28.4% and 16.1% of Sirius Internet Listeners tune in to Howard 100 and Howard 101, respectively. Just like in his days of old on terrestrial radio, Howard Stern continues to be the most listened to channel.
• Rock and Pop lead in the music categories: Sirius Hits 1 commands the top music channel with 10% of Listeners heading to this channel. However, while people are tuning in to hear the latest pop hits, just as many people are tuning in to listen to the two classic rock channels (Classic Rewind and Classic Vinyl).
• While not on the list here, Sirius NFL Radio does break into the Top 10 listened to channels during the NFL season. 9.3% of Sirius Internet Unique Listeners listened to Sirius NFL Radio in September ‘08. This was #4 overall!
• Online listeners love their caroling: Sirius XM Pops and Cinemagic, two channel dedicated to Holiday music, were in the Top 10 listened to channels in December ‘08. Cinemagic was the 2nd most listened to channel in December ‘08 with 14.2% of Sirius Internet Listeners listening to Holiday music. The top channel was still Howard 100.

With a large percentage of listeners tuning into Howard 100 and Howard 101 on SIRIUS Internet Radio, what will happen to Sirius XM Radio if Stern were to leave at the end of his contract in 2010? Howard Stern commands a large audience, many of which might cancel their service if Stern were to leave at the end of his contract. As Internet Radio continues to grow, Stern’s next move could be to bring his own channel to the World Wide Web. I can see it now, the Stern Internet Radio iPhone app being the biggest app of 2011.

Why would McDonald’s not use filetofish.com to capitalize on its most ignored sandwich the one time of year 23.9% of the US population is compelled to consume it at least once a week (lent)? Where is the website counterpart to the viral Arnold phenom that is “Gimme-that-filet-o-fish”? Where is the follow-through?

First, some history. According to USA Today, the filet-o-fish (one “L”) was “invented” in 1962 in Cincinnati by McDonald’s owner Lou Groen for the sole purpose of satisfying the demands of his predominately Catholic clientele on Fridays. Comprised of fried fish, half a slice of cheese, and tarter sauce, it has since gone on to sell, amazingly, at a rate of 300 million patties per year.

So given the history and the Canonical rules, it seems like McDonalds would want to seriously chase the Catholic dollar online; however, filetofish.com has been left suspiciously derelict. If you look at Unique Visitors during Lent for the past three years, you can smell the scent of demand. With no memorable substantial web-presence or campaign tie in (that I know of, or that the Wayback Machine could show me) there are still organic spikes in UVs to filetofish.com during the pre-Easter season. Admittedly, the data is a little thin here (low sample), but the seasonal variance is obviously undeniable.

There is a unique opportunity for McDonald’s to execute a campaign once a year AND to follow through with a related “filet” inspired web presence. By matching Catholic consumers weekly demands for fish with the often forgotten, often maligned, filet-o-fish, McDonald’s could briefly capture some fish sandwich market share.

Several movies made the roughly $3 million investment to advertise at the Super Bowl this year and now with a full month gone since the Steelers became world champions, it’s a good time to see just what they got for their money.

The ten movie ads that aired during the Super Bowl (including the G.I. Joe spot just before the game) saw highly varied subsequent interest at their official movie sites.

(Year One’s Crackle.com page was used because viewers were directed there at the end of the spot)

Predictably, high-action blockbusters dominated traffic, but official channels aren’t the only place that people are checking for information about upcoming movies. With over 20 million unique visitors per month, IMDb.com is a popular destination for anything you need to know about movies.

Highlights

• The effect of March release dates and further marketing efforts on the more recent weeks should be noted for some of these titles, such as Race to Witch Mountain and Monsters vs. Aliens.
• While the action blockbusters well outpaced others on their official sites, the lead wasn’t so dominating on IMDb, where lesser-known movies like Year One managed to carve out decent interest.
• For the week of the game, Up’s ranking varied the most, coming in the fourth highest among official channels and falling all the way to last on IMDb. Fast & Furious saw opposite results, with the official site in the bottom half of the rankings, but climbing all the way up at third on IMDb, moving past Star Trek.
• Combining Disney’s two offerings (Race to Witch Mountain and Up) still only moved their ranking up to fourth (official sites) and fifth (IMDb) for the week of the game – that’s $6 million to barely finish in the top half.
• However you look at it, both Transformers and G.I. Joe created significant interest that has been sustained beyond the week of the game, despite release dates in June and August.

This just goes to show that just as interest in movies varies, so does the destination for getting information about them. Movie marketers need to be aware that their message about the film isn’t the only one fans are seeing and increasingly account for third-party channels in their promotional efforts.

Like many moviegoers, I’m eagerly awaiting the film version of the classic Alan Moore Watchmen comics, opening Friday. Although I’ve been getting most of my information about the movie through friends, and most recently an article in Wired, I wondered where people are going online to learn more about this highly-anticipated fill.

I analyzed where people who used terms including the keyword ‘watchmen’ on major search engines were directed over the last 10 weeks. The chart below shows the top 10 sites that these people were referred to by keyword share and the percentage of all traffic generated by searches including the keyword ‘watchmen’ that went to a particular site.

Even though the studio site was the #1 destination for these searchers, and official movie sites figured prominently into the top 10, much of the search traffic for this film was referred to social media sites.

• The official studio site was the #1 destination for searchers in this period: about 18.5% of people who searched for “watchmen” keyword were directed there. In fact, ‘watchmen’ was the 4th most popular keyword for warnerbros.com in general, generating almost 3% of the domain’s total search referrals over this same period.
• Wikipedia, at 18.4% of keyword referrals, was a close second in terms of most referrals, ranking above dedicated movie site IMDb.
• Social media sites took up three of the top 10 spots:
  • YouTube ranked fourth. Although the Watchmen-related videos were posted by individuals, one member did say the studio had given him permission to use official copies.
  • Blogspot was #9 by keyword referral, and MySpace rounded out the top 10.

In the next few weeks it’s likely that the flow of traffic to Watchmen-related destinations will change as people considering going to see the movie search for reviews. Visits to other review and social media sites – like Rotten Tomatoes (#11), Facebook (#12) and Twitter (#21) – will likely increase. Still, the fact that so much of this initial search traffic is going to social media sites before the release date suggests that the channel is an important information source for audiences even weeks before they buy a ticket.

So movie marketers take note: social media matters even before the movie is released. And, it’s making Watchmen look pretty cool.

See you at the movies.

I was in L.A. last October walking with some friends near Hollywood Boulevard and a billboard actually caught my attention (I am usually engaged by GPS or friends). The billboard had the picture of a man smiling covered in blood splatter with the caption, “America’s Favorite Serial Killer.” I turned to my friend and asked, “Who is Dexter?” From that point on, I have not missed an episode of the award-winning series “Dexter” and I am excited Showtime has decided to pick up two additional seasons.

For those who don’t know the series, Dexter Morgan is a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department who stalks and kills murderers that have fallen through the cracks of the justice system. Showtime (affiliated with CBS) has hit a home run with this series and season three had the largest premiere audience in Showtime’s history, with 1.2 million viewers.

What is most interesting about Showtime is their use of online search marketing, continued investment in search words from Google and Yahoo! and application of online media to their overall marketing. They have had success and controversy with viral videos, especially the “hit list“campaign where you scare a friend into thinking they are next on a serial killer’s list with a phony news broadcast.

The success of “Dexter” is multifaceted and can be broken down into three categories:

• Creating Interest - The series has compelling characters, an award-winning storyline and acting that is coupled with creative marketing and a strong multi-media / marketing mix
• Sustaining Interest - DVD launches before premieres may contribute to increases in website activity during premieres and re-invest viewers in the series
• Broadening Accessibility - Airing the first season on CBS in February of 2008 increased exposure significantly with a 136% increase in web traffic from season 2 to season 3 premieres

The upward trend of website exposure indicates that the move to fill the gap in the writers’ strike slump with the CBS airing and current marketing efforts were solid moves. Since inception, “Dexter” has won 17 awards (including 2 Emmys and 6 IGN’s) and had 22 nominations (including 6 Emmys and 4 Golden Globes) and, with season three ending in December, I believe 2009 will be another year of accolades for the cast and crew. Showtime gaining exposure on CBS and multi-tiered marketing efforts have prepared “Dexter” for success, I only hope the series maintains its integrity and quality. Season 4 is anticipated to start filming in the spring of 2009 and continue to air in its current time slot on Showtime. The airing of season two on CBS has not been scheduled at this time and I am interested to see how much will be edited out to show on network television - it’s pretty intense.

Side Opinion: The greatest television travesty in my generation was the poor marketing management of Arrested Development by Fox. If Fox had utilized a similar marketing strategy as Showtime, Arrested Development (with its multiple awards) would have had the same commercial success.

While Smartphone owners may use email, calendar and contacts most often, the people I know can’t live without at least one other feature of the mobile web. Some love their GPS, others like a constant feed of sports scores, others want to be able to see their Facebook friends’ status updates at all times. My personal favorite convenience is being able to look up movies and showtimes when I’m away from my computer.

Now that I have a Smartphone, I tend use both it and my PC to make movie plans. So I wondered if other Smartphone owners are doing the same thing, and if iPhone owners were behaving any differently. Is mobile information changing how we’re using the internet on our computers to plan a night at the movies?

To answer these questions, I took a look at some of the survey and clickstream data from Compete’s recent Smartphone Intelligence study.

As we can see from the chart, not all device owners behave the same way. About 2.5 times more iPhone owners said they looked up movies and showtimes on their phone at least three times in a month.

But what about online behavior? On average, iPhone and other Smartphone owners both look up movies and showtimes on their computer about 3.8 times a month. iPhone users, however, spend about 20% less time doing this on their computers.

So, iPhone users are looking up movies and showtimes more often on their phones. They’re performing the same task on their computers just as frequently as Smartphone owners, but not spending as much time on it. Why could this be?

The behavior of the iPhone users may be rooted in demographics and functionality. The demographic part of the explanation is that iPhone owners who responded to our survey were slightly younger than the other Smartphone owners. Thirty percent of iPhone respondents were under 34, compared to 22% of Smartphone respondents. Most theatrical audiences also tend to skew younger.

The other factor influencing behavior of these groups on the mobile and fixed internet may be the availability of applications and the relative ease of the mobile web browsing experience. The new Smartphone I recently bought has a lot of great features, but movie and showtime application choices are limited. A quick check of the iTunes Application Store yielded five choices, four of them free. Making the mobile web easier to navigate has been a key feature of the new Smartphones – like the G1, the Storm and the Bold – but many devices are behind the iPhone in this regard.

So what does all of this mean? Clearly, looking up movies and showtimes on the personal computer isn’t disappearing anytime soon, but it is possible that the availability of better mobile options will lead people to use that channel more often, creating new possibilities in location-based and mobile advertising.

See you at the movies.