The Hollywood Reporter published an exclusive overview of the record-setting traffic of this year's Met Gala. Read an excerpt below, or the full story here.
Condé Nast says that the Met Gala livestream had 74 million views across its owned platforms (i.e. Vogue.com) as well as on YouTube and TikTok, up 30 percent from a year ago. And it had 2.1 billion total video views in its first seven days across all video content made for the Met Gala, including livestream, replays, clips on its owned-and-operated platforms, social and YouTube, up 73 percent from last year.
“Our content strategy around the Met Gala centers around one goal – to reach as many people as possible, with engaging original content – all of which we hope translates into visitors to the museum,” says Vogue VP and global head of content strategy Anna-Lisa Yabsley. “The fact that the gala generated more social mentions than even the Super Bowl (+4.5x) is a testament to audience appetite for this fundraising event. We are absolutely thrilled with the record-breaking numbers we saw this year.”
Perhaps most significantly, Vogue says that 44 percent of the YouTube watch time for the live stream during the red carpet and gala was on a connected TV set, suggesting that the Met Gala was replacing traditional TV viewership for the evening.
The Met Gala has become one of the hottest red carpets of the year, with high-wattage celebrities all looking to make a statement based on the year’s theme. This year, for example, Zendaya and Tyla each delivered outfits that caught the attention of fans and fashionistas.
Vogue says that its unique page views were 16.7 million, up 17 percent from last year, while engaged minutes totaled 54.3 million, up 19 percent.
But in a world of consumer attention scarcity, it is the increase in video consumption that is sure to catch the eye of Condé executives, not to mention advertisers.
“Vogue had its most successful Met Gala of all time with significant growth in livestream and video views, site traffic and social engagement,” said Deborah Brett, Condé Nast’s global digital chief business officer, in a statement. “According to Oracle’s Moat, this year’s event drove nearly 1600% more consumer time spent online than an average day, and helped generate 15x more time spent with celebrity style content. This kind of jaw dropping scale is driven by Condé Nast’s commitment to always meet our consumers on the platforms and surfaces that matter to them most. The attention that the Met Gala commands is already massive, and this year, our strategic partnerships with platforms like TikTok and YouTube were instrumental in helping us meet our fans everywhere they are.”
While the Oscars earned a media-impact value (MIV) of $1.1 billion, the Met Gala topped that figure, earning an MIV of $1.4 billion between online coverage and social-media conversations.