Biz360 Analysis of Social Media Predicts American Idol Finale

Adam Lambert predicted as winner by narrow margin

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. — May 20, 2009 — For the last three weeks running, Biz360® Inc., the leading provider of media and market intelligence solutions correctly predicted the contestants that would be voted off the American Idol show, Matt Girard, Allison Iraheta and Danny Gokey. This week, based on it’s analysis of social media conversation; the company is predicting Kris Allen to be voted off, leaving Adam Lambert as the winner.

At the time of this release, the final two competitors were within less than 1 percentage point of each other. Kris Allen had generated a slightly lower amount of social media coverage compared to Adam Lambert. Further, he generated a lower amount of “positive to neutral” conversation than Adam, also by a very narrow margin. With less than 1 percent between the two contestants, an accurate statistical prediction is impossible due to the limitations of margin of error. Nonetheless, Biz360 is predicting Kris Allen will be the contestant voted off the show and Adam Lambert the winner based on the information available.

"This was a phenomenally close race and a challenge to predict. But a lot of clients and colleagues are asking for our prediction, given the success of the last few weeks, and we don’t want to disappoint them. People are fascinated about how social media can provide these near real time consumer insights. For the last 7 days Adam and Kris were generally tied in our social media monitoring. However, in the last 24 hours or so, Adam has pulled slightly ahead" says Tamairah Boleyn, director of marketing at Biz360.

The analysis demonstrates how advanced measurement techniques can quickly and efficiently gauge public opinion and provide key insights. Biz360’s Community Insights solution was used to examine social media coverage (including blogs, message boards, forums, micro-blogs, online news media and social networks) that mentioned each of the contestants in this week’s competition. Biz360 analyzed both the near real-time volume of the coverage as well as the tonality of the conversations (positive, neutral or negative).

"I think it’s amazing that we are able to analyze thousands of social media conversations and reflect back how close the race is between these two Idol contestants," says Tony Priore, chief marketing officer at Biz360. "Even if it comes down to a margin of only a few votes, social media has already proven to be an accurate gauge of what people are saying now. It can be a powerful feedback resource for marketers in evaluating the impact of their products and marketing programs."

About Biz360 Community Insights

In the process of making a purchase decision, consumers follow predictable stages from initial brand exposure to awareness, consideration, and, ultimately, to purchase. To provide intelligence at every stage of the decision process Biz360 offers a family of solutions, including Community Insights, Media Insights, and Opinion Insights.

In the early stages of the decision process, which includes building awareness, consumers typically engage passively with many forms of communications—while narrowing their choices and forming opinions about products, services and companies. Community Insights provides the information needed to assess the impact of these social media communications. Biz360 Community Insights is an enhanced research and intelligence solution that continuously monitors and analyzes social media conversations and their impact on businesses. This proprietary Web-based solution is built on advanced data aggregation and analytics techniques, including natural language processing (NLP) to provide a wide range of critical and relevant reports, flexible tools, user-defined metrics, and even alerts for managing emerging issues.

About Biz360, Inc.

Biz360 Inc. removes the inefficiencies of traditional market research by using technology to transform information into actionable insights that help businesses make better decisions. Using advanced data analytics, we aggregate and analyze vast amounts of news and social media data to yield ongoing, relevant metrics which enable our clients to better understand and reach their target audiences, shape market perception, respond to competitive threats, evaluate trends and issues and improve the return on their marketing investments. Biz360’s clients include AAA, Aetna, AstraZeneca and CA. Biz360 can be reached at 866.424.9360 or www.biz360.com.

Contact

Tamairah Boleyn, Biz360
(503) 292-5807
Tam.boleyn@biz360.com

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