TV hits can come from anywhere

For years, marketing a TV show followed a familiar playbook. Most budgets centered around the premiere date and large, metropolitan hubs like New York or Los Angeles. If the show didn’t catch on after a few weeks, it was a “flop.”

TV streaming changed the game. With viewers watching at their convenience, a show’s success isn’t measured by the audience it starts with, but rather the audience it ends with. In fact, new Roku search data shows that some of the most successful shows weren’t immediate hits but gained momentum over time.

For marketers, the takeaway is clear: It’s never too late to promote your show.

Big premiere vs. slow burn

Marketers can no longer assume a show has flopped because it failed to gain traction in key coastal markets during premiere week. In fact, 78% of Roku users say that if they miss the first couple episodes of a show, they don’t feel like it’s too late to catch up. More than one in three people (35%) purposely wait for a series to end so they can binge-watch all at once.¹

With that in mind, we analyzed each state’s average share of searches for the following shows: Abbott Elementary, Dark Winds, Hacks, Our Flag Means Death, Reservation Dogs, Severance, Ted Lasso, The Bear, The Old Man, The White Lotus, and Yellowjackets. 

In our analysis, a few things jumped out:

• During premiere week, these titles were most popular in the Midwest and Southwest.
• By week five, demand had spread to the Northeast, Southeast, and West.
• By week 10, demand had narrowed to the West Coast and Northeast.

We also studied “sleeper hits” vs. “smash hits.” A sleeper hit is one that took weeks to catch on. Think Abbott Elementary, P-Valley, or Ted Lasso. The smash hits were shows like House of the Dragon, The Kardashians, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power with beloved characters and plenty of marketing dollars behind them.

Sleeper hits were initially popular in markets that are hardly considered traditional Hollywood tastemakers. The top state was Massachusetts, where 67% of households were more likely to search for a sleeper hit title than the rest of the country.² That was followed by Oregon (57%) and Illinois (54%). The smash hits saw early success in Western states like Washington (32% more likely to watch than the rest of the country), Nevada (28%) and California (24%).³

While smash hits garnered more demand at launch, sleeper hits eventually surpassed them — proving the value in marketing a title long after its premiere and to a much wider audience.

When people see themselves in the storyline, they’re more likely to watch

When people relate to the characters in a show, they are more likely to become early adopters. For example, households with at least one teacher were 154% more likely to watch the schoolhouse comedy Abbott Elementary during premiere week. Meanwhile, surveyors are 56% more likely to watch Western drama 1883, real estate workers are 124% more likely to watch reality show Selling the OC, and psychologists are 240% more likely to watch psychological thriller Severance.⁴

Ethnicity is also a big driver in early adoption. For example, Reservation Dogs — a comedy/drama centered around four indigenous teenagers — was searched by Native Americans 1,112% more than the rest of the country the week of its premiere. Meanwhile, Black households were more likely to search for shows with primarily Black casts like Abbott Elementary (+91%), Bel-Air (+197%) and P-Valley (+319%) the week they each premiered.⁵

Advice for Marketers

TV streaming has changed, so advertising should, too. For marketers, this means:

It’s never too late to promote your show. Re-engage at week five and beyond to acquire incremental subscribers and engage existing ones that have yet to watch your content. Amplifying mid-season episodes as the story unfolds and going big at the finale can help capture widespread demand and attract viewers waiting to binge later.

Hits can start from anywhere. California and New York are important, but markets like Massachusetts and Illinois can carry a show early. Slow burns in smaller communities can lead to red-hot hits.

Lean into early adopters. When people see themselves in the cast, characters, or storyline, they are likely to become early adopters. Use those insights to shape your marketing and create early demand.

Use search data to inform targeting. To find niche audiences, determine which groups are over-indexing in searches for a title early on.

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¹ Roku Tune-In Survey, October 2021 

²⁻⁵ Roku Internal Data, 2022