Guardians of the Galaxy Trailer Tops Man of Steel in Social Media Impressions

Last night's debut of the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer created about 88,000 impressions across social media in its first twelve hours. That's more than the 75,000 or so impressions made by the first Man of Steel trailer, but less than the 96,000 generated by The Amazing Spider-Man 2. There are a few qualifiers one could reasonably place on these numbers:

It's possible that Man of Steel skews a bit older, since Superman is often perceived as a character who has trouble connecting to the youth market. While older viewers use social media, they don't do it with the same fervor as people under 40 or so. It's possible that as social media becomes more and more ingrained in our lives, the pace of these kinds of things is just increasing. A 25% margin over Man of Steel for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 seems like a lot, although the first Amazing Spider-Man movie did make about 10-15% more globally than did Man of Steel (the Superman reboot made more domestically, though). Of course, while the second Man of Steel trailer generated enormous enthusiasm, it's also worth noting that neither the first Man of Steel trailer nor the one for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 were without a significant number of detractors--meaning that no matter how you count these numbers, the overwhelmingly positive response for Guardians of the Galaxy has to be considered a huge boon. "The reaction was giddy," Ben Carlson, president and co-creator of Fizziology (the firm that did the research), said. "I think a lot of people didn't know how the film was going to work,  it's five superheroes and one of them is a raccoon and another is a tree. But they nailed the tone. It was light and fun and full of action and you see that reflected in the social media reaction." They also report that while 75% of all the conversation about Guardians was being driven by men (a warning flag), that was offset by the fact that New York and Los Angeles, who generally account for about 40% of everything said about a movie trailer online, represented only 32% this time out, suggesting that other markets were more engaged than usual. The trailer has generated more than 5.4 million views on Jimmy Kimmel Live's YouTube account, and has been copied and reposted all over the Internet, including on some official or semi-official channels. Marvel Studios have yet to repost it to their own site in the U.S., giving Kimmel a window of exclusivity, but internationally it's already up on Marvel's U.K. and other YouTube channels. Since awareness is considered one of the major hurdles the film faces, having impressions that slide in between the two most visible superheroes in the world can't hurt.