The 2018 Oscars: How Viewers Reacted and Which Brands Won Big

Jimmy Kimmel returned to his role as Oscars host during the star-studded event Sunday night, which was broadcast on ABC. B&C worked with Canvs, the emotion measurement company, to take a look at viewer reactions during the big night. Also below: a look at the biggest-spending brands as well as advertisers who captured the most attention, with data from iSpot.tv, plus a look at online video trends courtesy of Tubular Labs.

The Oscars generated an impressive 1.02 million Emotional Reactions (ERs) on Twitter according to Canvs, with love reigning supreme throughout the conversation, appearing in 29.3% of ERs. Overall the conversation was very positive, with other popular emotions that people expressed including congrats (13.2%), crazy (10.7%), enjoy (9.4%) and beautiful (5.1%).

Related: Oscars Down on ABC

Best original screenplay winner “Get Out” was the most mentioned movie of the night (even more so than best picture winner “The Shape of Water”), with its writer/director Jordan Peele the second most-mentioned individual, just behind Kobe Bryant, who took home best animated short feature for “Dear Basketball.”

According to iSpot, which has attention and conversion data from more than seven million smart TVs, brands spent more than $141 million, according to preliminary iSpot estimates, to place adds during the show, with Samsung Mobile, Cadillac and Walmart — and their respective industries — leading the way by a large margin.

But when it came to holding viewer attention, Google, Bubly (a new sparkling water brand from PepsiCo) and Verizon were three of the brands with the highest iSpot Attention Indices during the night. (iSpot.tv attention analytics measure the length of time an ad appears on a TV screen and the propensity of consumers to interrupt “ad play.” Interruptions include changing the channel, pulling up the guide, fast-forwarding or turning off the TV)

In terms of individual commercials, this Google Assistant TV spot featuring Chrissy Teigan led with an iSpot Attention Index of 172, receiving 72% fewer interruptions than average. Close behind was Walmart, with a fun one-minute spot-turned-short-film directed by Dee Rees and featuring Mary J. Blige that had an Index of 167. Also notable: this spot for Nest and this one from Bubly; both had an iSpot Attention Index of 161.

When it came to pre-show buzz online, there was a massive spike in video viewership the day after Oscar nominations were announced, according to video analytics company Tubular, followed by an even bigger spike immediately following the show itself, as video clips were posted by ABC and others online. Facebook videos led the way with 40.8 million views of Oscars-themed content in the last 90 days. Here are the top three most-watched Oscars-related videos:

1. “Timothee Chalamet - The Oscars” by ABC Television Network

2.2M views


2. “Get Out! - The Oscars” by ABC Television Network

1.7M views


3. “Tiffany Haddish and Andy Serkis announce this year's nominees.” by The Academy

1.4M views