‘Roseanne’ Ratings Not Whole Story As Ad Buys, Social Media Trend Up

As Hollywood and America continue processing the massive audience generated by ABC’s revival of Roseanne, some numbers are coming into focus that also have Madison Avenue’s attention.

Tuesday’s premieres of the first two episodes of the revival drew 17.7 million and 18.6 viewers, respectively. For advertisers, the hour generated 275 million ad impressions, according to new data from ad tracking firm iSpot. Advertisers included Subway, Pepsi, Samsung and Microsoft.

The sheer tonnage of promotional real estate certainly didn’t hurt the show’s prospects. Promos took up 20% of ABC’s total ad load over the past two weeks, racking up 610 million impressions across all TV devices, about as high a level as iSpot has ever measured. The level of older viewers — 70% age 34 and older — also was at the very high end of the usual range.

In terms of which ads popped during the hour, the No. 1 spot in iSpot’s rankings was one from Ashley HomeStore, which ran twice and generated an attention index of 179. (That means that the spot got 79% fewer interruptions — people skipping the ad or flipping channels — than the average.) The Ashley ads were followed in the attention ranks by a spot for Google Pixel 2, with an attention index of 171, and then by Subway at 162.

Canvs, a firm that gauges viewers’ emotional reaction to TV across social media platforms, tallied 105,996 emotional reactions, meaning about 45% of all tweets conveyed some form of emotion. The company said few scripted shows crack the 100,000 level in terms of emotional reaction.

The most popular reaction was “love,” at 27.2%, followed by “excited” at 15%, “enjoy” at 12.6% and “funny” at 9.7%.

The mid-season debut of the show comes at the precise moment when the ad business is finalizing its plans for media buys. Broadcast and cable networks are hosting buyers at upfront presentations, culminating in mid-May with broadcast upfront week. TV has been losing luster compared with digital as marketers look for viable places for their messages. Aside from NBC’s This Is Us, the broadcast landscape has been lacking a breakout hit.