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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America

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Searching for Oscar winners

March 02, 2009

At Hitwise we’re always fielding questions about the impact of offline events upon online behavior from our clients and some great examples surround popular television events like the Super Bowl, Oprah’s Favorite Things and the Oscars. Following last week’s telecast of the award show; searches for Oscar-related content dominated the Entertainment category last week as online users sought out information about the winners. Two award-winning films appeared among the searches along with the winner for Best Actor Sean Penn.

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Searches for the film Slumdog Millionaire jumped 295% from the previous week, after winning 8 Oscars, including Best Picture. The movie title was also the 3rd ranked fast moving search term among all categories for the week ending March 1, 2009. In comparison, another Best Picture nominee, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button garnered significant interest from searchers as well, but with the majority taking place around the film’s release during holidays. The majority of the searches for Benjamin Button tapered off after the initial release, even after receiving the highest number of Oscar nominations.

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However, a win doesn’t guarantee searches, Mickey Rourke was among the favorites to win Best Actor for his role in The Wrestler, but Sean Penn took home the statue. Searches spiked for both of the actors last week, but the search volume for ‘mickey rourke’ was more than double that of ‘sean penn’. The majority of the searches centered on the actor’s biography and previous movies along with curiosity about plastic surgery.

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