Covid-19 Daily Bulletin 18/05: Article Analysis and Cancelled Concerts

Event promoters need to adapt to a more virtual world.

Welcome back to week nine of our Covid-19 daily bulletins. Today we’re looking at the gap left by Eurovision, and how publishers might be getting the hang of Covid-19 content.

If you’re not already signed up for our bulletins, click the button below.

Publishers doing more with less Covid-19 content

For many weeks we’ve been tracking the size of the online discussion around Covid-19, the number of articles published on the topic, and the level of engagement those articles get. This week we’re continuing that, with a couple of changes.

We’re now including data on the total number of engagements Covid-19 content gets in our chart, rather than average engagements. This will give us a better idea of the amount of engagement there is overall, but we’ll look at average engagements as a measure of content quality separately. We’ve also changed how we count the number of articles. Previously, we only included English-language content, but we now include all languages.

There has been no change to how we measure the size of the online conversation. This is still based on the number of unique accounts mentioning Covid-19. We then index these metrics to Mar 2 so we can compare their trends over time.

With that explanation out of the way, and these changes applied retroactively to the data, let’s see what we’ve got.

Clearly the downward trend across all metrics has continued. The number of people mentioning Covid-19 dropped by 7% (compared to 6% the week before).

The total number of engagements fell by 13%, the lowest change we’ve seen in the last few weeks and much lower than the 25% drop the week prior.

The above point is particularly interesting as the amount of Covid-19 content being published dropped by 17% (compared to 10% the week before). This means it fell more than the amount of engagements, suggesting publishers are getting more out of their content than before.

We can see this borne out by looking at the average engagements per article.

This number hasn’t gone up since mid-March. Now we’ve seen it grow by 3% – what could this mean?

It’s early days at the moment and one week does not make a trend, but there are a couple of possible explanations. One, that people are starting to get more interested in Covid-19 content again, or two, that the content is getting better.

The latter would mean that publishers are moving away from a scattergun approach of pushing out any and all content on Covid-19, and instead becoming more measured, putting work into more valuable and informative content people actually want to engage with.

We’ll have a better eye on the situation next week, especially if this new trend continues. But as more publishers let employees go last week, it’s clear that many will be looking at their content strategies very carefully.

There is a lot to gain from coronavirus content – 325m engagements in a week are not to be sniffed at – but they’ll need to get things right to get their fair share. Decent, high-quality content will get them the results they’re after.

Eurovision retrospective, and the future of concerts

Last week, traditional Eurovision celebrations (where each country puts forward a unique, often kooky, musical act for a massive live event) were interrupted because of Covid-19. To make up for it, participating countries aired a well-received retrospective show that looked back on previous decades of the event and showed off this year’s entrants who didn’t get to play to a live crowd.

With no proper competition, there were only 299k mentions of the music show this year, down 75% from 2019. But we also found 2019 mentions were down 31% compared to 2018, suggesting Eurovision was already slowly falling out of popularity.

Despite the fall in numbers, the retrospective show was a hit with diehard fans. Of sentiment-segmented conversation, 68% of mentions were positive. Social particularly loved Finland’s 2020 entry, with 9k believing they would have won had Covid-19 not ruined the bid. Unfortunately Eurovision rules state acts cannot re-enter with the same song in 2021.

Meanwhile, Abba’s 1974 performance in Brighton (where Brandwatch is headquartered) garnered 5k mentions after Brits voted it their favorite Eurovision entry of all time.

The retrospective show sparked a fallout discussion where people wondered what the future of concerts could be. A vital consideration was how important live shows are for music revenue.

Social distancing and fear of catching the virus are obviously huge problems to overcome. We found over 1m mentions, from March 1 to May 17 2020, from people stating they wouldn’t go to a show because of them.

An ongoing workaround is live virtual events. Streamed events have been a hit on social, with 565k positive mentions from March 1 to May 17. One third of Finland tuned into a virtual concert to celebrate May Day, and Fortnite has been breaking records with its in-game shows. Generally, consumers have praised how technically impressive these virtual shows are, but have also complained that they lack atmosphere.

Drive-in concerts, which require concert-goers to park in a field and rock out, are already being rolled out. From March 1 to May 17, 39k social posters were in favor of these kinds of shows.

As the Eurovision throwback episode highlighted, we can’t rely on retrospectives forever to keep consumers entertained. The entertainment industry needs to be looking into new and exciting ways to keep business afloat.

Get more in-depth data

Don’t miss our free weekly reports with a ton of detail.

Head here to find out more and get signed up.

Thanks for reading

Don’t forget to subscribe if you want to get these bulletins every day.

Stay safe,

Brandwatch Response Team

Digital Consumer Intelligence

Update subscription preferences

Unsubscribe