Diesel Labs

04/30/2026

Here at Diesel, we’re happy to share our 5th annual End of Year report, a comprehensive study of audience engagement in 2025. We tracked billions of signals across social and video platforms to understand what truly captured our attention— and where things are heading in 2026!

The biggest shows of the year made one thing very clear: audiences love what they already know. Squid Game’s season three dominated audience attention throughout pulling nearly 4.3x the engagement of the #2 ranked title. The rest of the list is preexisting shows save for It: Welcome to Derry, notably an extension of a preexisting franchise.

Even with no new episodes on the horizon, concluded catalog titles don’t show signs of fading. Audiences gave a lot of love to the Breaking Bad universe, with both the original series and spinoff Better Call Saul in the #1 and #6 slots respectively.

If 2024 belonged to Wicked, 2025 was all KPop Demon Hunters — and it wasn’t close. The Netflix film generated over 112 billion engagements, a staggering figure that eclipsed every other movie on the list by nearly 10×.

So what made KPop Demon Hunters the breakout of 2025? While most films see measurable levels of anticipatory engagement before release, for KPop Demon Hunters we only observed meaningful attention after its streaming release on Netflix.

Want to know more about how 2025 is shaping the media of today? See the full End of Year Report for analysis breaking down the top media, emerging insights, platform-specific trends and the signals behind them!

04/30/2026

02/13/2026

With over 124M viewers tuning in this year, Super Bowl LX between the Seahawks and Patriots has become the second-most-watched game in Super Bowl history. A common conversation topic coming out of the game was the prevalence of ads featuring AI in some fashion - so we took a deeper look to see how the ad lineup stacked against benchmarks.

Nearly 20% of all ads mentioned or featured AI - most of which were online services or products such as Anthropic (Claude), Ring, OpenAI, and Genspark. In particular the Ring ad stood out to audiences, with a majority of engagement calling out the ‘search party’ feature as being a mass-surveillance capability hidden behind a heartwarming use case featuring finding a lost pet.

Compared to the breakdown from the 2013 telecast, Automotive ads were down (-8.8%) while CPG (13.3%) and Online Services ads (+18.0%) were up significantly. From a creative perspective, there were more inspirational (+12.7%) and celebrities / athletes (+10.7%) spots in 2026.

Interestingly, the proportion of ads that were TV promos was significantly lower than our benchmark year (-27.6%) which is in alignment with the media landscape’s shift toward more ephemeral streaming content. Movie promos on the other hand were up slightly (6.7%), as distributors seek to bolster their box office results.

Overall, those who suspected they were seeing a lot of AI ads were indeed correct - we’ll be keeping an eye out on future special events to see if the trend continues as we venture further into 2026!

01/06/2026

Looking for additions to your 2026 reading list? Consider John Malone’s ‘Born to be Wired’ which contemplates the evolving media industry and features data from Diesel Labs. Find it at your local bookstore today!

11/25/2025

Worried about awkward family interactions this holiday season but not into football? Diesel’s got you covered! Here are the top 5 movies (based on audience engagement) from 2025 to put on as a way of avoiding more fly fishing stories from Uncle Larry…

11/25/2025

Worried about awkward family interactions this holiday season but not into football? Diesel’s got you covered! Here are the top 5 movies (based on audience engagement) from 2025 to put on as a way of avoiding more fly fishing stories from Uncle Larry:

10/20/2025

It’s been roughly three weeks since .film came, sat and stayed in the box office. An independent film made from the perspective of a haunted man’s dog, Good Boy was produced on a budget of $750k. How has it fared so far?

The film netted $2.3m in its domestic opening box office, just under Diesel’s projected $2.6M to $4.9M, with $6.3m total so far.

It marks the 3rd theatrical-to-streaming release from and after and . All 3 were acquired at or before film festivals, all theatrical releases, all eventually streaming on Shudder.

IFC and Shudder have a unique collaboration– both are child companies under AMC Networks (not to be confused with AMC Theatres), and have the ability to coordinate theatrical and streaming releases with dexterity.

Visualizing the release schedules of the films from festival moving forward reveals an interesting strategy at work. Once the films are acquired, the timeline from trailer drop to digital release is fairly condensed.

The move from theatrical to digital release is particularly short for the three IFC / Shudder films, averaging 25.7 days between the two milestones compared to other 2025 films averaging 41.2 days. This strategy maintains momentum from the previous step throughout the release schedule.

🐾🔦Is Good Boy an old dog learning new tricks in the industry? Time will tell. To fetch trends and insights, keep your nose to the ground with Diesel Labs!

09/29/2025

It’s been an eventful 1.5 years since Bluesky opened public registration, and we now have enough engagement to start to look at how the new community differs from X / Twitter. We took a deep look at how the two platforms react to topics within the media landscape.

Engagement with entertainment content happens in both “virtual town squares” but around different topics. Bluesky users tend to focus more on Science Fiction, Drama and Action & Adventure content while X users are more on the live side with Sports and Specials.

A ranking of top content by category also helps illuminate how the two platforms differ in their attention to media topics, or in some cases like for “KPop Demon Hunters” where both audiences are unified in their interest levels.

By looking at the top shows without Sports and Specials, the differences are even clearer. While Pro Wrestling and Animation are popular on both, the focus on Science Fiction / Action & Adventure on Bluesky is in stark contrast to the focus of Reality and Anime on X.

A butterfly flaps its wings, and we see change in the social media landscape! We’re excited to see how Bluesky soars from here. Keep your eyes on the skies with Diesel as we continue to drop insights from our Content Intelligence platform.

08/21/2025

It’s the summer of LOVE. ICYMI, and (a reality dating show franchise where participants must couple up in order to succeed) have dominated the content airwaves this summer, thanks in part to a near daily airing schedule for approximately 2 months. With the US reunion airing on Monday (8/25), we dusted off the sand from this summers fun and took a look at the data!

That volume strategy extends to social presences, where both shows post at a higher rate than their competitors:

1️⃣ Love Island UK - 13.2 Instagram posts per day in season
2️⃣ Love Island US - 7.4
3️⃣ Love Is Blind - 1.0
4️⃣ The Real Housewives Of Atlanta - 0.5
5️⃣ Married at First Sight - 0.1

The same is true for YouTube:

The same is true for YouTube:
1️⃣ Love Island UK - 5.3 YouTube posts per day in season
2️⃣ Love Island US - 2.1
3️⃣ The Real Housewives Of Atlanta - 0.4
4️⃣ Love Is Blind - 0.3
5️⃣ Married at First Sight - 0.1

This coordinated effort results in a truly dominant performance. Together the sister shows reached a combined peak of 89.9% in content share of voice on July 1st. Meaning ~90% of all content conversation on that day was about one of the two shows.

A quiet summer likely aided in that performance. Excluding sports & specials, the following movies competed with the 2 LI franchises during their run:

1️⃣ KPOP Demon Hunters - 16.0% peak daily SOV
2️⃣ Superman - 10.8%
3️⃣ Jurassic World Rebirth - 6.3%
4️⃣ The Fantastic Four: First Steps - 2.4%

And across television:

1️⃣ WWE Monday Night Raw - 18.3% peak daily SOV
2️⃣ South Park - 11.8%
3️⃣ The Real Housewives of Atlanta - 2.6%
4️⃣ Sakamoto Days - 2.0%

The fun in the sun isn’t just for the US or UK either. 29 total iterations of the franchise have been produced in 24 different countries over the course of its history.

🏖️ 💋 For more news about Love Island and all things reality dating, soak up the sun and hot goss with Diesel Labs!

08/06/2025

It’s clear how has driven the conversation even before she arrived in the