‘The Bachelorette' Is Back: Quick Viewership & Ad Insights
After a long wait, ABC’s smash hit The Bachelorette finally came back last night. The lucky lady for season 16 is Clare Crawley, who was a runner-up on the 18th season of The Bachelor.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this season will look a little different than previous ones: Instead of taking place at the usual Bachelor mansion, everything was filmed at an isolated La Quinta, California resort, where the cast and crew were kept quarantined to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks. And, of course, there was the months-long delay in production and the premiere due to the virus — usually new Bachelorette seasons kick off in May, and yet here we are in October. Ahh, 2020!
We dug into some viewership and advertising highlights around the much-anticipated premiere, supplied by VIZIO’s Inscape, the TV data company with insights from a panel of more than 16 million active and opted-in smart TVs, and iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company. There’s also a look at Crawley’s social engagement with data from influencer marketing platform CreatorIQ.
Per Inscape’s minute-by-minute data, viewership rose slightly over the course of the two-hour premiere, with the highest rates of tune-in occurring in the final 25 minutes.
Audiences from the Midwest and Southeast tuned in the most heavily: Top local area markets included Meridian, MS; Jonesboro, AR; Omaha, NE; Green Bay-Appleton, WI; and Wausau-Rhinelander, WI.
Examining Inscape’s viewership crossover data, it appears that Bachelorette fans have a lot of network loyalty: Looking at the other (non sports/news) shows these viewers have watched recently, the list is almost entirely ABC series.
On the advertising side of things, the season 16 premiere of The Bachelorette generated 280.3 million TV ad impressions, an 8% increase from the season 15 premiere in May 2019.
Target was the most-seen brand during the premiere, with its spot “Always Taking Care” delivering 11.2 million impressions from three airings. Other top brands included Disney+ (8.3 million), Hulu (8 million), Cologuard (7.6 million) and Little Caesars Pizza (7.5 million). Target was the only brand in the top five for both this season’s premiere and the season 15 premiere, and it saw a 38.26% increase in impressions for this one vs. 2019.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the bachelorette herself. According to CreatorIQ, Crawley has an “excellent” engagement rate on Instagram of 5.32%.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, her audience is overwhelmingly female (91.2%) and 45.4% are between the ages of 25-34. Most fans (81.4%) are from the U.S., with the top states including California, Texas and Florida. When it comes to brands that Crawley’s audience engages with, Walt Disney tops the list, followed by Starbucks, Apple, Netflix and DC Entertainment.
