Digital advertising specialist Exponential predicts The Big Short will win the Best Picture Oscar, narrowly beating Spotlight. The Revenant and Room are the next most likely.
How’s it done?
Exponential successfully predicts Oscar winners using a technique called “look-a-like modelling” which analyses the behaviour of 32,000 people working in the Los Angeles Film industry with similar characteristics to Oscar voters. They’re from a very narrow demographic group say the Los Angeles Times – 94% Caucasian, 77% male, average age 62.
“We know the typical Oscar voter is a frequent traveller, invests heavily in home theatre systems, follows tennis and baseball, is concerned about privacy and Social Security, buys expensive watches, and drives a European luxury car,” explains Bryan Melmed, Exponential’s VP of Insights. “Thus, the film interests of people with similar interests give us a strong clue as to where votes would go.”
Why the others came up short
These were the main areas in which fans of these films differed to the typical Oscar voter:
- Brooklyn: not big film fans, prefer TV – 80x more likely than average to watch Downtown Abbey
- Bridge of Spies: fan base too conservative and strong interest in armed forces, the defense industry and the FBI
- Mad Max and The Martian: fans are too young and diverse
- Room: audience doesn’t show a strong male skew, women make up a large portion
- The Revenant: fan base is too diverse, conservative and religious
Why 2016 could be the last successful prediction year
This year’s Oscars have become embroiled in controversy around the lack of diversity in this year’s nominations (#OscarSoWhite). Consequently, the Academy has announced changes to ensure its members are younger and more racially diverse.
“The 2016 prediction has been the hardest by far due to the fact that increased attention and the politicisation of the process adds noise to the data and makes voting patterns less predictable,” concludes Melmed. “A more diverse voting system – which would favour The Revenant this year – would be welcomed by all but it makes prediction more difficult, so this is probably the last year we can use this approach.”
Exponential Interactive delivers innovative advertising experiences that transform the way audiences interact with brands across desktop and mobile. Exponential’s platform fuses one of the largest global digital media footprints and proprietary data with user-centric ad formats designed to drive engagement and performance. Creativity, data and audience insights form the foundation for building smart and relevant brand engagement and brand performance solutions for advertisers and publishers. Exponential was founded in 2001 and has locations in 22 countries. For more information, please visit www.exponential.com.