Data has never been more important to cinema operators. Many large cinema chains trumpet how they are using analysis of data collected from their patrons to achieve better results. Smaller cinemas have been left behind since collecting and making sense of this data is expensive and nontrivial. On the other hand, Google Trends is a free data analysis service of which cinemas can easily take advantage. Small cinemas can only show a limited number of titles, thus selecting the right films is of critical importance to achieve profitable results.

The following is an excerpt from a piece James Gardiner wrote for Celluloid Junkie on the subject:

Pre-Christmas 2021 I used Google Trends to select the titles to play. And the predicted result: 1 – “Spider-Man: No Way Home”, 2 – “Sing 2”, 3 – “Ghostbusters Afterlife”. And predicted Fails: “West Side Story” and “Matrix Resurrection”. I booked films based on these indications. A major win for my small cinemas.

Below I will walk readers through my approach and example of utilising Google Trends so any cinema owner can utilise these tools.

Google is an advertising company that uses data analysis to achieve better results for those who advertise with them. As part of this function, they track every search a user makes on “Google Search”, “YouTube” and many other affiliated platforms. With this data Google can then create comparisons in popularity for specific terms. This is the basis of how the tool works. But in a cinema owners case, we need to utilise it to better represent popularity in upcoming film releases. (read the full article on Celluloid Junkie)