Find out which trailers and posts filled seats.
For marketing teams at film studios, TV networks and streaming services. Your tickets, sign-ups, viewing and ad accounts all sit in different places. Arcus connects them into one place you own, adds how fans talk about your titles online, and tells you what to keep, test and stop.
Free, no card. Pick a question and we answer it with your own numbers.
Arcus
You asked: What drove sales in week 3?
Week 3: sales up 18%. 1,240 TikTok and Reddit posts about one unpaid creator. Next: test paying them in half your regions.
- From your sales + CRM
- From TikTok + Reddit
Why nobody sees the whole picture.
Film and TV marketing is built around dates. A trailer drops, a release lands, a season premieres, and the window to move people is short. The results you care about live in different places. Tickets come through exhibitors and ticketing partners. Sign-ups sit in the streaming service’s own systems. Viewing is measured by the platform, a ratings firm, or both. Email and fan lists sit with CRM. If you license a title to a service, you may not see viewing at all.
With every piece somewhere else, nobody can see which spend is working. Each ad platform gives itself credit, and two channels can count the same fan. Your ad accounts report reach and clicks. Your social accounts report views and engagement. A trailer partner reports completed views. Each number is true inside its own platform, and none of them sees a ticket bought at the box office or an episode watched on a living room TV. Meanwhile fans are talking in YouTube comments, Reddit threads, Letterboxd reviews and Discord servers, and that conversation often says more about what will open than any recap does.
Arcus connects those pieces into one place you own, inside your own setup: tickets, sign-ups, viewing, CRM, ad accounts, your YouTube channel and agency reports, plus what fans say. The first question is usually simple: what worked on the last release? Then you can ask the bigger ones: who a new title is really for, which trailers brought viewers who stayed for the season, and whether your loudest fans are the ones buying tickets.
What you know, plus what people say.
We connect every piece into one place you own, inside your own setup. The answer draws on both halves.
What you know
- Tickets
- Sign-ups and viewing
- Email and fan lists
- Ad accounts
- Your YouTube channel
- Agency reports
What people say
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Letterboxd
- IMDb
- Rotten Tomatoes
- Discord
What teams like yours tell us.
Results live with other people
Ticketing partners, exhibitors, platforms and ratings firms each hold a piece. Pulling them into one view usually falls to whoever has time, which is nobody in release week.
Release windows reward everything
The week a title opens, every channel looks good, because demand peaks no matter what ran. Every report counts the peak. Nobody looks at the quiet weeks between seasons.
Fans talk about titles
In our audience report for a streaming service, fans talked about the shows and raised the service only when it got in the way: ads, the app, a canceled show. Listening that tracks only your brand name misses most of the conversation.
The voice is hard to get right
Accounts that try to sound like fans often get mocked for it. Without counting how fans write, every caption is a guess about the register.
The numbers that matter.
The ones that show whether marketing worked in studios and streaming, and where each one comes from today.
| Measure | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Tickets by market and day | From ticketing partners and exhibitor reports. Lined up with media by market, it shows whether a push moved presales or arrived after people had already decided. |
| Sign-ups and returning viewers | From the streaming service’s own records. Returning viewers matter as much as new ones: in our audience report, fans described dropping out between shows and coming back for one. |
| Viewing and completion | Hours watched, episodes started and finished, from the platform or a ratings source. It tells you whether the people a campaign brought in stayed for the show. |
| What fans post under trailers | From YouTube and TikTok. We count the callbacks, the lore, the complaints about the wait and the “we’re back” lines, which tell you what fans are waiting for. |
| Search interest for the title | From Google Search, by region and day. It rises before tickets or sign-ups do, so it shows whether a trailer started demand or followed it. |
| Ratings and reviews over time | From Letterboxd, IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. Shifts after opening show word of mouth, which campaign recaps rarely cover. |
A sketch got 42 times the views of a sincere post. Fans talked about the shows.
For a streaming service, we counted how men 18 to 24 talk across TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, X and Instagram: 293 TikToks, 6,622 comments and 4,283 Reddit questions. An acted-out bit had a median of 91,850 views, a sincere post 2,171 and a brand post 1,675. Only 1.9% of what they asked each other was about hobbies, games and entertainment, yet four trailers drew 78,682 comments. For studios and streamers, that means the audience gathers under the title itself, and that is where your marketing gets judged.
Where your audience talks.
The places we usually read for studios and streaming brands. What people say there ends up in the same place as your own sales and customers.
YouTubeTrailer comments. In our audience report, four trailers carried 78,682 comments, and fans used them for callbacks, lore and asking when the next season lands.
TikTokFan edits between seasons, clips that travel, and how your own account’s posts compare with the formats fans run themselves.
RedditLong threads on plot, casting and cancellations, plus complaints about ads, prices and apps that never reach your inbox.
LetterboxdHow film fans rate and review, often in one line. Watchlists and early reviews show which titles have a following before release.
IMDbRatings and reviews from a broad audience, useful for seeing how a title lands beyond its core fans.
Rotten TomatoesAudience reviews next to critics, and how far apart the two sit after opening.
DiscordFan servers where the most committed viewers organize watch parties, theories and rewatches.
What we look for first.
The patterns that most often explain the gap between what each channel reports and what your own numbers show.
- 1Release-week creditWe check how much of a reported result landed in the peak days around release. Then we compare it with markets or weeks where the media was lighter, so the peak doesn’t get counted as the campaign.
- 2Title search in the numbersWe check how many credited tickets or sign-ups came from people searching the title by name. They were already looking for it.
- 3Returning viewers inside new sign-upsWe split results into new viewers and people coming back. In our audience report, fans treated the service as something they stopped opening between shows, until a show brought them back.
- 4The comments as a briefWe count what fans post under trailers and clips. In our audience report, a note to the marketing team got 54,000 likes, and a teaser built on the fandom’s own joke about the wait was applauded in a reply with 11,000 likes. Fans review the marketing in public, and their comments tell you what they want next.
Questions worth asking.
Six questions for your next budget meeting, in your industry’s terms.
How to test before you move budgetTry it free.Then we build it for you.
Try it free
Pick a question, like “who is our next title really for?” We answer it with your own tickets, sign-ups or viewing, plus what fans say online. You get a few slides with the answer on top. No card.
Walk through it together
We go through it on a 30-minute call, including which numbers you hold, which ones partners hold, and where the data is too thin to call.
We build it for you
If you go ahead, we connect your ticketing data, sign-up records, viewing, CRM, ad accounts, YouTube channel and social accounts, plus what fans say online. It all goes into one place you own, inside your own setup: your own data lake. We build it around your slate, with your release dates, titles and markets written in, so every answer knows your business. It takes about three months. Before we connect anything, we agree with you on exactly what we can access. You approve each step, and answers arrive along the way.
Ask anything, around your dates
Ask before a release, during it or between seasons, and the answer sees the whole picture. Each one is a few slides: the answer on top, the evidence, then what to keep, test and stop. Regular answers can also arrive on a schedule you choose.
Questions studios and streaming teams ask
More in the full FAQ, or ask us on a call.
Which trailers, clips and creators moved people to watch?
We line up every trailer, clip and creator against your tickets, sign-ups and viewing, and count each result once.
How do fans talk about our titles?
We read the comments under your trailers, Reddit threads, Discord servers, Twitch and Kick chat, count what comes up, and show you the words they use.
Should our accounts sound like the fans?
Usually not. In our audience report, one word in 62 was slang, and the most searched slang of the year barely appeared. The voice that worked replied to fans, stated a date, and let fans’ own lines lead.
Can you tell us what to post between releases?
Yes. Every answer ends with a short list of what to make next, based on what the audience is already doing.
How do you measure whether a trailer sold tickets?
We line up trailer views, comments and title searches with tickets by market and day. Search and comments move first, tickets follow. When you need proof of cause, we hold media back in a few markets and compare.
Can you measure streaming sign-ups from a campaign?
Yes. We match every sign-up a channel reports against your own records and count each one once. We also split new viewers from people returning, because a show often brings back viewers who drifted away.
What if we license a title and don’t see the viewing data?
We work with what you have. Search interest, review sites and fan conversation become the signal, and we say plainly where the data is too thin to call.
Is social listening worth it for film and TV?
Yes, if it counts. Fans leave detailed notes under trailers, on Reddit and on review sites. We count the topics and the words they use and line them up with tickets, sign-ups and viewing.
Other teams we work with
See the wholepicture.
Pick the question you’re least sure about. We answer it with your own numbers and what people say online, then walk you through it in 30 minutes. Free, no card.