(5 minute read)
When the first season of Netflix's Stranger Things was released on July 15, 2016, it came just 3 weeks after the finale of Game of Thrones Season 6.
Season 6 ended with both the memorable "Battle of the Bastards" and Cersei's wildfire finale. After the last episode aired, fans scratched their heads thinking what was next to watch besides their favorite reruns of Friends, The Office or jumping back into The Bachelorette.
In comes Stranger Things: Season 1 that not only reached Game of Thrones-level popularity in its first season but has continued to grow its momentum year over year.
Using Google Trends, Google's organic search analytics tool, we are able to identify key moments in time when a certain topic becomes viral based on people's Google Searches.
Below shows a 5-year trend of Google Searches in the United States pertaining to HBO's Game of Thrones and Netflix's Stranger Things. Take a look ...
There are a few observations you can already make. One is that the Game of Thrones trend (in blue) looks like the sign of the horns (pinky and index finger up) while Stranger Things (in red) will shoot up randomly in one week. This is because of the shows' distributions: Game of Thrones releases one episode per week during each of its seasons while Stranger Things drops all of their season's episodes in one day.
More importantly is the fact that Stranger Things' last 3 trends from its last 3 seasons come immediately after Game of Thrones' last 3 seasons. The red lines jump out soon after the blue lines reduce down to a flat line.
In fact, the exact timing of a Stranger Things release date is on-average only 6 weeks based on the last 3 cases. See below.
Take a look at the 3-week time gap between the Game of Thrones season 6 finale and the first episode of Stranger Things. It's a bold move to quickly follow up an extremely popular TV show with a brand new one. From experience, people will continue talking about a season finale at least a week after it's over. Fans comment on Reddit threads, blog posts, YouTube videos, and Rotten Tomato reviews to encourage discussion, but after a couple weeks, you might expect people to continue living out their lives, waiting for the next thrill of a TV series.
So it was a smart placement by Netflix to possibly attract Game of Thrones viewers by waiting out that grace period and giving people time to prepare and embrace their new drama, which has to date been nominated for 4 Golden Globe awards and one BAFTA.
Interestingly, after the massive success of its first season, Netflix's Stranger Things has released its last two seasons no more than around 2.5 months after the last two season finales of Game of Thrones. If the series was so successful, why continue to attract fans from another popular series?
Well, there might have been some correlation last time, so why not right? Secondly, Netflix appears to have decided to capitalize on seasonal trends – releasing Stranger Things Season 2 on Halloween weekend and Season 3 on the 4th of July.
Still, both of these seasons dropped their episodes in over twice the 3-week timespan between the release of Stranger Things Season 1 and the Game of Thrones Season 6 finale. We may start to think that Netflix is realizing that their TV show has grown so much in popularity that they could theoretically release their new seasons at almost any time, yet they decided to choose a time that would make them the most profitable by finding when they would get the most viewers.
I'd hypothesize that Netflix distributors are using a hybrid approach in which they're capitalizing on both seasonal trends and on avid TV watchers that just finished Game of Thrones and are looking for the next binge. As long as another globally popular show like G.o.T is not premiering simultaneously, Stranger Things can easily outcompete another series for screen-time while attracting viewers from a show about dragons and during holiday seasons when people have time off.
Another good example of attracting another show's viewers was the great successes of Chernobyl, a TV Mini-Series released on May 6th, 2019 that not only saw a spike in viewership after Game of Thrones Season 8, but also received very high appraisal, earning a strong 9.5/10 on IMDB and a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Underneath the patterns and the observations, these release dates reveal the importance of timing and positioning when it comes to marketing TV shows.
To reach as big of an audience as possible, understanding your show or movie's position in the greater landscape of TV and film can make a monumental difference. Imagine if Chernobyl had been released during Episode 1 of Season 8 of Game of Thrones; I would bet some hard-earned money that it would NOT have enjoyed the same success as it did because viewers would have been too distracted by Daenerys and her fire-breathing dragons to care about a new story about radiation. Chernobyl was reportedly really good so I can make that joke.
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| Photo from IMDB |
When the first season of Netflix's Stranger Things was released on July 15, 2016, it came just 3 weeks after the finale of Game of Thrones Season 6.
Season 6 ended with both the memorable "Battle of the Bastards" and Cersei's wildfire finale. After the last episode aired, fans scratched their heads thinking what was next to watch besides their favorite reruns of Friends, The Office or jumping back into The Bachelorette.
In comes Stranger Things: Season 1 that not only reached Game of Thrones-level popularity in its first season but has continued to grow its momentum year over year.
Using Google Trends, Google's organic search analytics tool, we are able to identify key moments in time when a certain topic becomes viral based on people's Google Searches.
Below shows a 5-year trend of Google Searches in the United States pertaining to HBO's Game of Thrones and Netflix's Stranger Things. Take a look ...
Google Searches in the last 5 years (September 2014-2019) for Game of Thrones and Stranger Things. Trends plotted based on relative popularity on a 100 point scale.
More importantly is the fact that Stranger Things' last 3 trends from its last 3 seasons come immediately after Game of Thrones' last 3 seasons. The red lines jump out soon after the blue lines reduce down to a flat line.
In fact, the exact timing of a Stranger Things release date is on-average only 6 weeks based on the last 3 cases. See below.
Take a look at the 3-week time gap between the Game of Thrones season 6 finale and the first episode of Stranger Things. It's a bold move to quickly follow up an extremely popular TV show with a brand new one. From experience, people will continue talking about a season finale at least a week after it's over. Fans comment on Reddit threads, blog posts, YouTube videos, and Rotten Tomato reviews to encourage discussion, but after a couple weeks, you might expect people to continue living out their lives, waiting for the next thrill of a TV series.
So it was a smart placement by Netflix to possibly attract Game of Thrones viewers by waiting out that grace period and giving people time to prepare and embrace their new drama, which has to date been nominated for 4 Golden Globe awards and one BAFTA.
Interestingly, after the massive success of its first season, Netflix's Stranger Things has released its last two seasons no more than around 2.5 months after the last two season finales of Game of Thrones. If the series was so successful, why continue to attract fans from another popular series?
Well, there might have been some correlation last time, so why not right? Secondly, Netflix appears to have decided to capitalize on seasonal trends – releasing Stranger Things Season 2 on Halloween weekend and Season 3 on the 4th of July.
Still, both of these seasons dropped their episodes in over twice the 3-week timespan between the release of Stranger Things Season 1 and the Game of Thrones Season 6 finale. We may start to think that Netflix is realizing that their TV show has grown so much in popularity that they could theoretically release their new seasons at almost any time, yet they decided to choose a time that would make them the most profitable by finding when they would get the most viewers.
I'd hypothesize that Netflix distributors are using a hybrid approach in which they're capitalizing on both seasonal trends and on avid TV watchers that just finished Game of Thrones and are looking for the next binge. As long as another globally popular show like G.o.T is not premiering simultaneously, Stranger Things can easily outcompete another series for screen-time while attracting viewers from a show about dragons and during holiday seasons when people have time off.
Another good example of attracting another show's viewers was the great successes of Chernobyl, a TV Mini-Series released on May 6th, 2019 that not only saw a spike in viewership after Game of Thrones Season 8, but also received very high appraisal, earning a strong 9.5/10 on IMDB and a 98% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
To reach as big of an audience as possible, understanding your show or movie's position in the greater landscape of TV and film can make a monumental difference. Imagine if Chernobyl had been released during Episode 1 of Season 8 of Game of Thrones; I would bet some hard-earned money that it would NOT have enjoyed the same success as it did because viewers would have been too distracted by Daenerys and her fire-breathing dragons to care about a new story about radiation. Chernobyl was reportedly really good so I can make that joke.