Buzzgain

Its no secret that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is an extremely popular show with over 2.1 Million viewers (primetime), over 50,000 Internet only viewers and an extended audience of over 35,000 per episode. The favorable audience demographics (with over 60% younger than 35 years of age, over $67,000 in annual income, pre-disposed Democratic and very aware of pop culture, news and politics) has seen advertisers flock to the segment with over 67% repeat advertisers.

We analyzed the guests for 136 shows (there were fewer shows, thanks to the writers strike) in 2007 and 144 shows in 2008 (Oct 30th 2008). The show no doubt has a very current affairs and politics bent and is fairly liberal in its bias but we were more looking for 3 things:

1. What topics/themes or categories were important for The Daily Show viewers?

2. What was the “effect” on book sales from a slot at The Daily show?

3. What the net (online) PR effect of the exposure that The Daily Show brings you?

So what are the top 3 tips to be a guest on The Daily Show?

1. A overwhelming number of guests were from Politics (2008 – 47% and 2007 – 38%) or related fields (Thanks in big part to the elections). Celebrities and media personalities were second. Science and technology were relative blips. Except Bill Gates in 2007, no other technology personalities were in the lineup.

Tip #1: If you want to get on The Daily Show your best bets are writing about the effects of anything on Politics (both current and historical). So if you can talk about the effect of technology on fund raising for the elections, or the effect of Youtube on campaign ads, you’re probably a shoe-in.

2. Delayed Gratification: Only 17 times (out of 144 in 2008) did the authors make the top searches on Google Trends. That too a day after the show. We estimate this was due the fact that most of the guests were already “well known” but that would not explain the lack of searches for “the promotion” to appear on Google Trends. Meaning, what they were promoting – either a book, a movie, etc. should have appeared on the top searches, but that was not the case in a majority of the cases. The delay on Google trends also indicates the “Tivo effect” or the fact that over 35% of the people watching the daily show either tape it and watch later than its live broadcast or view it on the Internet.

Tip #2: We dont have Amazon book trends or Movie trends, to know the full effect but we can confidently say that appearance on The Daily Show should be part of your PR / book promotion strategy not the cornerstone.

3. The Net PR effect: Since 2007, The Daily Show has been posting entire episodes of the show online on their website, which has limited the ability to view the sharing trends on YouTube. But if you analyze the Digg, Discussions threads, Twitter and Social Bookmarking effect of the show, it ranks among the top on social media. The only shows that rank better are Two and a Half Men and Dancing with the Stars. For more on the details we cross-checked with our friends at Social Sights.

Tip #3: To measure the net effect of your PR with The Daily Show you have to take into account the “virality” of its spread, not just the viewers on TV or the 30-40K viewers per episode online.

What other metrics would you analyze to see the effect of The Daily Show?