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Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Around the world, spring and summer are when humankind gets reacquainted with the outdoors. For many of us, that also means sharing space with legions of newly-hatched bugs in all of their fluttering, jumping, and biting glory. Over the past several years, the arrival of warm weather in parts of the United States has also come with the re-emergence of spotted lanternflies — which are an invasive species to North America, South Korea, and Japan — and online chatter about them. 

First spotted (pun intended) in the United States in Pennsylvania in 2014, the pretty but destructive flying bugs have now infested more than a dozen states. Their spread sparks an annual wave of conversation, both online and off, about what these bugs are and why everyday people should join the effort to eradicate them. We used our Meltwater social listening and analytics platform to take a look at spotted lanternfly conversations from April 15 through July 15, 2023. The insights we uncovered show just how much these little creatures are sparking interest in insects and awareness of invasive species.

Top Locations for Lanternfly Keyword Mentions

Naturally, most U.S. spotted lanternfly keyword mentions are coming from New York and Pennsylvania, the states hit hardest, and earliest, by the infestation. New Jersey rounds out the top three followed, interestingly, by Texas, where the species was first found in the fall of 2022.

When we look at top locations by city, New York City and Pittsburgh are the top places for spotted lanternfly mentions. Meanwhile, outside of the United States, Canada has the second-highest volume of spotted lanternfly keyword mentions. Though, at about 450 mentions, those from Canada make up a very small proportion of the overall spotted lanternfly conversation. 

Reddit is one of the top sites for engagement with content about spotted lanternflies. 

Over on Reddit, the most engaged post features a video showing one user’s homemade, non-toxic lanternfly trap. So far, the post has garnered 4,400 upvotes and 150 comments full of people praising the effective DIY contraption. 

Let’s take a moment to take a closer look at Reddit, which is the top social media platform for users asking for more information about mysterious bugs that turn out to be spotted lanternflies. Over the past three months, there has been an average of three mentions each day on Reddit of lanternflies with the phrases "What is this", "What's this", or "know what this is".

Black/white/red all over found in queens New York. What is this beauty?

The post that drew the most engagement is called “Black/white/red all over found in queens New York. What is this beauty?” It generated 1,900 upvotes and more than 500 comments, with the highest-rated response being: “Spotted lanternfly. Invasive. Kill them all.” Unsurprisingly, the top Reddit page in the “What is this” lanternfly conversation is r/whatisthisbug. For lanternfly mentions overall, r/pittsburgh comes out on top.

The content that had the highest Social Echo (meaning it was posted, shared, and interacted with most on social media) was a link from the positive news outlet Upworthy. Its article about Bobbi Wilson winning the Sustainability Award from the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions racked up a Social Echo of nearly 10,000 engagements on Facebook. Wilson originally drew media attention in the fall of 2022 after a neighbor called the police on the Black 9-year-old for spraying DIY, non-toxic insecticide on lanternflies in her neighborhood in an instance of racial profiling.

On Twitter, the top authors of this summer’s lanternfly conversations are all news outlets that have reported on the spread and methods to combat it. The New York Times’ Tweet promoting its article about lanternflies was viewed more than 213,000 times.

Twitter users who want to get in on the conversation should use #spottedlanternfly, the most-used related hashtag on the platform. Though the most retweeted lanternfly Tweet, featuring a custom illustration about killing lanternflies, didn’t include any hashtags at all. 

Once people learn about lanternflies and the harm they cause as an invasive species, the natural next question is, “Well, how do we kill them?” There are generally three options: stomping (also known as squishing, squashing, or stepping on) them, spraying them with insecticide, or capturing and killing them with sticky traps. But which option is most popular? 

Our analysis comparing mentions of lanternfly keywords along with those related to each action revealed that stomping is overwhelmingly the most talked about way of killing lanternflies.

This summer’s spotted lanternfly conversations point to an audience of internet users who are interested in learning more about bugs and earth-friendly ways to fight invasive species. Luckily, there is an entire community of bug enthusiasts across social media who are sharing their love of entomology with others. (Here’s a warning for the squeamish: The following pages feature images and videos of creepy crawlers.) They include:

@wannabe_entomologist on Instagram (Influencer score: 78)

@BartCoppens on YouTube (Influencer score: 78)

@sagaOptics on Twitter (Influencer score: 80)

Despite the efforts of amateur bug stompers and governmental agencies, the spotted lanternfly is still spreading across the United States, as well as South Korea and Japan, with many other countries at high risk of infestation. As this problem grows, we’ll likely see conversations about it growing across even more locations. So, next summer, prepare for even more #spottedlanternfly sightings online and, more critically, in your neighborhood.

Would you like to be able to conduct analyses like these for your business? Simply fill out the form below and get a free consultation.

The Online Buzz about Lanternflies

In a fast-paced eCommerce business, finding time for professional development and store improvement isn’t always easy. But listening to Shopify podcasts offers a simple way to learn a little every day. You can tune in any time it’s convenient and expand your knowledge on how to run a better Shopify store.

Whether you prefer Spotify podcasts or Apple podcasts (or another channel), we’ve got you covered.

Here are our top picks for the best Shopify podcasts that can help you sell more and build your eCommerce business:

Tip: We also have a list of the best eCommerce podcasts in general that could be helpful to you.

Shopify Masters is the official Shopify podcast.

Each episode features a Shopify eCommerce store owner who shares how they’re building and growing their online businesses. Learn how they turned an idea into sales, how they’re marketing themselves in the digital space, and how they’re competing against giants like Amazon and Walmart.

With nearly 500 episodes to date, there’s plenty of food for thought and action items to apply immediately.

Shopify is the biggest name when it comes to eCommerce platforms that aren’t part of bigger marketplaces like Amazon. To make a splash here, sellers need to know the winning secrets behind what makes the platform tick. That’s what the Winning With Shopify podcast aims to reveal.

Each episode features successful store owners and their stories to help inspire your journey. New episodes are released every Friday, covering everything from Google advertising to customer acquisition.

Listen to the Winning With Shopify podcast on

Shortly after selling her last online store, ecommerce entrepreneur Susan Bradley decided to do it all over again, this time documenting every step of the way.

This Shopify eCommerce podcast helps new store owners build a solid strategy from the ground up. Susan goes behind the scenes of successful Shopify stores to learn their sales secrets that other entrepreneurs can duplicate. She also lays out her tips and tricks in a logical path that any seller can follow.

Listen to The Ecommerce Roadmap podcast on

The Unofficial Shopify Podcast offers nuggets of wisdom for all ecommerce business owners, but the conversations are tailored to the Shopify platform.

Hosts Kurt Elster and Paul Reda interview some of the top-performing Shopify store owners to gain an inside look at how they’re building their businesses.

No topic is off the table — episodes feature things like sustainability, customer acquisition, Google Analytics, and how to go viral. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

Listen to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on

It’s a classic internet success story — what started as a side hustle has grown into a highly successful, multi-figure empire. Host Peter Pru has become a household name in the digital business space. He’s helped countless others build successful dropshipping businesses on Shopify and freely shares his secrets on his podcast.

Episodes dive into the nitty gritty of how dropshipping works, how to find the best products to sell, and how other successful businesses work (and how you can duplicate their successes!).

Listen to the Ecommerce Empire Builders podcast on

The Shopify Solutions Podcast lives up to its name by giving listeners real, succinct examples and recommendations on how to grow their Shopify businesses.

With many podcasts, listeners have to pick out the most salient bits of info while wading through endless conversations. But this podcast does an excellent job of giving clear takeaways you can put to use right away.

Listen to The Shopify Solutions Podcast on

Profitable Shopify stores don’t have to take the form of a “traditional” job. The Ecommerce Fastlane podcast focuses on how to use Shopify as a passive income stream, giving you steady revenue without making it a full-time job.

Hosted by industry expert Steve Hutt, each episode features insightful interviews with leading ecommerce entrepreneurs, consultants, and experts.

Gain valuable knowledge on marketing tactics, conversion optimization, website design tips, automation tools, and more.

Listen to the Ecommerce Fastlane podcast on

Presented by Shopify experts, this podcast aims to provide bite-sized episodes packed with valuable insights and actionable tips you can enjoy over a cup of coffee (or tea, if that’s your jam).

Take a captivating and informative journey into the world of online retail. With a focus on practicality, each episode is designed for a quick listen, making it perfect for busy store owners to build professional development into their schedules.

Listen to the Ecommerce Coffee Break with Claus Lauter podcast on

Ecommerce has created new opportunities for retailers, from the rise of DTC brands to the “always on” ability to acquire new customers. Of course, this has also led to an influx of new competitors, with the number of new Shopify stores growing over 200% between 2020 and 2022.

To compete, sellers need a solid strategy, and Ecommerce Playbook gives you the secret plays of top sellers that you can apply in your own Shopify store. Each episode sheds light on different aspects of running an eCommerce business and provides actionable advice to navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Listen to the Ecommerce Playbook podcast on

Shopify is a global Ecommerce platform, and selling strategies can vary from country to country. If you have a global presence, it’s worthwhile to listen to Shopify Across the Pond.

This podcast dives into marketing, branding, data, and trends like live shopping to inspire your action plan. Hear from brands in the UK market and their inspiring stories on how they’re attracting new customers and retaining existing ones, all with a focus on Shopify.

Listen to the Shopify Across the Pond podcast on

Host Sarah Levinger helps Shopify store owners get “unstuck” and back on track. She takes questions directly from listeners and covers them in depth in subsequent podcast episodes. She also brings in experts who can help shine a light on topics like return on ad spend, workflows, and increasing revenue, all without heavy lifting.

Episodes are anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes, giving you quick tips that you can listen to over breakfast. 

The Best Shopify Podcasts To Boost Your Sales

The media impacts virtually everyone. From news stories to social media platforms, what we see in the media helps to shape our views of the world. Even if you’re not a big consumer of media, the people around you might be. And media’s influence on their beliefs, ideas, decision-making, and conversations can make its way to you in your face-to-face interactions.

How exactly does media impact us? And what effect does it have on your business or brand? That’s where a media impact data analysis comes in handy. Here’s what media impact means for businesses, along with tips on how to measure it.

Why Is Media Impact Analysis Important for Businesses?

Let’s start with a definition: Media impact is the effect certain stories or mentions in the media have on audiences. This effect includes consumer sentiment, the perceived value of a product, and even product sales.

Impact also goes beyond whether the beliefs, ideas, or attitudes of individuals have been affected. We can look at impact on a more “macro” level to see how entire organizations, companies, or institutions have generated systematic changes.

The media (and journalism in general) is designed to have an effect on its audience. It’s supposed to inform the public, but it can also shape our perceptions of issues and events. When it’s your business being featured by news organizations, you need to understand the impact your media appearance has on the public and how it will ultimately affect your brand.

If impact is the byproduct of mass communication, then a media impact analysis is the act of understanding that byproduct. By definition, it’s the formal assessment of the media’s impact on an audience, business, or brand.

Getting mentioned by media organizations is an impressive feat. But brands shouldn’t stop there. They need to take the next step to understand what this publicity means for them, for better or for worse.

Some questions a media impact analysis might ask and answer are:

Did publicity directly influence sales and revenue increases?

Did the media coverage increase traffic to my website?

Did media coverage ultimately change how consumers feel about my brand or company?

Have I taken any business away from my direct competitors?

Has the mass media generated greater customer loyalty?

This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means. But it does demonstrate the scope and depth of a media impact analysis and how it can give you a better understanding of whether or not your advertising and PR are working.

Picture this: You spend $10,000 on a marketing campaign for your food security non-profit. Several news outlets and digital media publish the story about your new initiative to feed local communities. You track clicks from each source, see spikes in website traffic, and notice an uptick in donations to fund your project — all helpful quantitative data. But many dots still need to be connected.

Tip: Learn more about the Meltwater AI Spike Analysis feature!

For instance, all the activity you’re seeing now could be the direct result of your campaign and will cease as soon as your campaign ends. There may be no ongoing conversations about reducing food insecurity, no systemic changes, or no action taken by local governments to address the cause in other ways. Public opinion might remain stagnant.

If your goal was to create a larger conversation around hunger, a media impact analysis can help you see how you’re moving the needle. It adds in-depth context to quantitative data so you can see where your numbers are coming from and why they matter.

Media impact analyses work for for-profit businesses, too. Take Google, for instance. Meltwater enables Google to make sense of conversations beyond basic social analytics. It looks at consumer sentiment (the meaning behind the message) to understand the company's global footprint. It helps Google understand how campaigns perform in relation to each other, assess whether they reached key demographics, and dissect the relationship between the data they collect and their product objectives.

Making an impact that emphasizes a deep-rooted change in sentiment and social norms can be a long, slow process. Changes aren’t always immediately apparent. But tracking conversations over time can show you the overall impact of your media at every level — local, regional, national, and even international.

Historically, media impact has been measured through lab studies. Doing so through other channels has proved challenging due to potential selection bias. Today’s technology enables a better path to analysis with artificial intelligence tools like natural language processing and machine learning or image recognition software. It eliminates the risks of selection bias because it takes into account everyone in the new media ecosystem.

AI collects and analyzes millions of data points in real-time and turns them into usable insights. A similar feat would typically take entire teams of human analysts and countless weeks or months to produce somewhat similar outcomes.

Here's what a modern media impact analysis looks like:

We’re advocates of starting with the end in mind and working backward. When you know the impact you’d like to make, you can better tailor your content and campaigns to produce the desired outcome.

Having an impact goal gives you something to compare the results of your campaign to. Later, when you start analyzing the conversations people are having based on your campaign, you can see whether those conversations align with your original intentions.

There are many ways you can measure media effects. Some of the most common metrics include:

Stanford Social Innovation Review reminds us that there’s no guarantee that a story that reached millions of readers will have a greater, real-world impact than one that reached thousands of readers. Clicks also only tell part of a story, especially since bots can be deployed to increase clicks and make it look like your content is getting traction.

Rather, reach isn’t so much about the size of the audience as it is about the substance of the audience. One way to get a better idea of reach is to look at how long a person engaged with your content. Someone who spent more time reading an article is likely to be more impacted by it than someone who bounced after a few seconds.

AI can help fill in the knowledge gaps by looking beyond clicks and getting a better idea of how people felt about your content.

Media can play a powerful role in shaping individual attitudes, thoughts, and opinions. And in some cases, it can shape the public’s perceptions as a whole. Media coverage can influence how other individuals and organizations approach certain issues.

Measuring the influence of your content is a big part of impact analysis. AI reduces the need to collect influence-related data through focus groups and interviews by analyzing online conversations and the context behind them.

When combined with other metrics, organizations can get a better sense of just how influential their content is to their audience and their own goals.

Social media marketing tends to emphasize vanity metrics such as likes, shares, and follows. These are often mistaken for engagement.

In reality, they mean very little in the grand scheme of things because they don’t indicate any level of commitment or understanding.

However, AI technology can bring more insights to engagement activities through social media listening and social media monitoring. Discover what else people are talking about on social networks beyond your brand. Learn what’s driving conversations, discover relevant topics, and become a more impactful part of your audiences’ lives.

Website traffic is a big part of engagement. It demonstrates that your content wasn’t just enticing to read, but it also encouraged the reader to take additional action. AI can bring greater context to traffic by showing you exactly what sources your traffic is coming from and which content drove the action.

3. Deploy a media monitoring and analysis solution

Media monitoring platforms like Meltwater do a lot of the heavy lifting for you when you're conducting a media impact analysis. Once you deploy your solution, AI tools go to work discovering and analyzing conversations, tracking metrics like the ones listed above, and turning information into insights.

From there, it’s a matter of looking at each resource and report with spelled-out data so you can get a better understanding of your impact.

At Meltwater, we have conducted several media analyses to serve as examples for you. Take a look at the following blogs to understand how it works and how it could look like:

The Oscars 2024: A Social Listening Analysis

Sponsorship Analysis Example: Springboks x Rugby World Cup 2023

Barbie vs. Oppenheimer: Which Movie Is Making the Biggest Social Media Impact?

Who Won Summer 2023? Barbie vs. Beyoncé vs. Taylor Swift

Game of Thrones: Season 8 Buzz on Social Media

Game of Thrones: Social Media Reactions to the Series Finale

The Battle for the White House on Social Media

Women’s World Cup 2019: Social Media Analysis

Understanding the impact of your public relations, media use, and media mentions is a critical step in any PR strategy. It removes any guesswork of whether you’re making a difference, both in your company and in the lives of your audience.

Our media monitoring and social media management platforms put AI to work in continuously generating these insights on your behalf - for example by using image recognition. We scour more than 270,000 global new sources and bring in more than 500 million pieces of content to our clients every day. Get a deeper understanding of your audience, track topics that matter, and watch your impact evolve over time.

Schedule a demo to see how we can simplify your media initiatives.

How to Conduct a Media Impact Analysis

The two most-anticipated movies of the summer come out on the same day — and they couldn’t be more different. Yet social media is abuzz about both of them in the lead-up to their debut in theaters on July 21. 

Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, follows the iconic doll and her longtime boyfriend, Ken, as they leave the toy world and enter the real one. On the other hand, Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt, tells the true story of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer as he develops the atomic bomb during World War II. 

The digital realm is filled with chatter about both movies, but how are Barbie and Oppenheimer conversations measuring up against each other? We used our consumer intelligence platform to find out. 

Reading Tips: Who Won Summer 2023? Barbie vs. Beyoncé vs. Taylor Swift, The Oscars 2024: A Social Listening Analysis

While posts and reposts about Barbie and Oppenheimer were relatively equal at the beginning of 2023, that all started to change in March, shortly before the first look of the Barbie movie was released. Since then, the volume of posts about Barbie has skyrocketed beyond those about Oppenheimer, which have dipped slightly since June. 

In total, there have been nearly 7 million social media posts about Barbie this year, reaching a potential audience of nearly 9.5 billion people and garnering more than 277 million engagement actions.

Barbie is also dominating the conversation when it comes to engagement actions, such as likes and shares. About 89% of all engagement actions in these conversations have been on posts about the Mattel doll-focused film.

Meltwater's consumer intelligence platform also shows us who has been drumming up the most buzz about each film. Margot Robbie, who plays Barbie, is certifiably the star of the summer. She has been mentioned in more than 410,000 posts in total, eclipsing mentions of her co-star Ryan Gosling (248,000 posts), who plays Ken, and director Greta Gerwig (189,000 posts). 

Meanwhile, Cillian Murphy, who plays J. Robert Oppenheimer, has racked up the most posts of his cast at about 63,000. That’s definitely a significant number, but it’s still no match for Barbie’s biggest names. 

But where are these posters located? For both Oppenheimer and Barbie, the vast majority of posts and reposts are coming from authors based in the United States. Notably, posts about Barbie are more distributed across other countries, with Brazil generating the second-highest volume of posts, followed by the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka. For Oppenheimer, almost 50% of posts are coming from the United States, while 2.7%, the second-highest volume, are originating in the United Kingdom.

Part of Barbie’s long history is that she was almost exclusively marketed to girls — that gender skew is reflected in the author demographics of social media posts about the Barbie movie. Many more women are posting about Barbie than men, 58% of whom are between the ages of 18 and 24. 

On the flip side, a higher proportion of men than women are posting about Oppenheimer, with 52.7% of them being between the ages of 18 to 24. And while both films are generating some buzz with the 25 to 34 age group, a higher proportion of authors ages 35 and up are posting about Oppenheimer than Barbie.

When it comes to sentiment, about 40% of posts about Barbie are positive compared to 7.5% of negative ones. Sentiment about Oppenheimer, which covers much graver subject matter, is understandably more mixed. About 27% of posts are positive compared to about 12% of negative ones.

Tip: Learn more about The What, Why And How of Sentiment Analysis and about Sentiment Analysis API

In the end, both Barbie and Oppenheimer are drawing the kind of attention any movie maker dreams about. But, as the consumer intelligence data shows, it is undeniably a blockbuster Barbie summer. 

Learn more about how Meltwater's consumer intelligence platform can help you understand what drives your audience — get a free demo by filling out the form below.

From changing digital payment habits to bank mergers and acquisitions, there has been plenty to discuss in the banking and financial services sector so far this year. While finance-related conversations are thriving in the digital world, some platforms are seeing more money mentions than others. We used our social listening platform to measure mentions of banking and financial services keywords across 10 sources from the first half of 2023. Here is where finance keyword mentions have decreased and increased.

Tip: Get more finance industry insights in our sector report: 2023 Industry Snapshot: Banking and Financial Services. 

Of the 10 sources we analyzed, finance and banking keyword mentions only fell on Pinterest and blogs.

Volume change compared to previous period: -19% (-880K mentions)

On social blogs, the 2023 finance conversation has been on the decline. This may be due to other sources drawing bigger audiences in previous months. Some of the top blogs that had the most mentions answered common banking and finance questions and provided timely market updates and analysis. [Note: This analysis looked at blog mentions from January 1 through May 31, 2023, due to changes in how we index Wordpress blogs. All other insights in this blog are based on data from January 1 through June 30, 2023.]

Volume change compared to previous period: -1% (-2K mentions)

The Meltwater Blog

The Online Buzz about Lanternflies

The Best Shopify Podcasts To Boost Your Sales

How to Conduct a Media Impact Analysis

Barbie vs. Oppenheimer: Which Movie Is Making the Biggest Social Media Impact?

Global finance conversations in 2023 (so far)

Meta's Threads: Our First Impressions

Meltwater's AI Press Release Generator

Recapping Meltwater Summit 2023!

How to use ChatGPT for PR Agencies

9 Powerful ChatGPT Prompts for Marketing

Why LGBTQ+ Representation in Marketing is Important

10 PR Podcasts to Enhance Empathy, Expand Your View of the World, and Help You Get Better at PR