America's Got Talent's objective is to be everywhere our audience is. On TV, online, on social media--and even in one of your mother's embarrassing posts she tags you in. Season 12 was the show's highest rated season ever, with AGT maintaining its position as the No.1 reality show of the summer for 12 straight years.We fed that enthusiasm by making sure our audience had immediate digital access to the show's surprising highlights, extra content and fan chatter! With immediate performance uploads, on air social tagging, call to actions for social opinions, and our talent/judges/host involvement, AGT led the way as the record breaker for a network TV show across the digital and social landscape.
Executive Producers welcome the digital department to be fully invested and involved in all aspects of the show. It's our strategy to search for, locate, and identify key talent from our shows that will also be most impactful on digital platforms. Every act is produced with the hopes of being a most talked about moment…and viral. Our digital production staff cuts clips from the linear show, and pushes them out on social media in real time. Once that last beat drops…our videos go live! By crossposting videos through Facebook judge accounts, show accounts, contestants, and local NBC affiliates, we orchestrate conversation to get our content to as many feeds as possible. Beyond video production of broadcast material, we also release digital exclusives to all platforms.These range from snackable interviews with acts moving on in the competition, to fun and lighthearted content with our celebrity judges. This most compelling content complements our engagement with fans and is told through gifs, memes, animated quote cards, and lifestyle tweets. Our digital department approaches every piece of content as a fan…because we ARE fans!
As a result of the AGT digital department's efforts, all-time-high broadcast ratings, and popularity online, AGT eclipsed any other network digital stat for a reality competition series with 2.8 BILLION video views (combined Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook); 7.2 MILLION interactions on Nielsen monitored social media; and 500,000 mentions on Twitter. AGT more than doubled its Facebook likes, growing 3.7 million fans in 4 months--a 62% increase from premiere to finale. Our Instagram following during Season 12 also grew 60%! When it comes to YouTube, our subscriber base from the season premiere to finale nearly doubled! The channel grew 42%, starting at 3.8 MILLION subs and ending the season with 5.4 MILLION. The AGT Twitter account grew 20% due to extraordinary weekly engagement! That growth was driven by making a connection with fans and spectacular viral moments—some which were the largest of 2017! By the end of the year, the Golden Buzzer audition by Season 12 winner Darci Lynne claimed YouTube's No. 4 Top Trending Global Video of the year with 42 million views on the platform. The same video also ranked as the No. 1 TV clip on Facebook in 2017 with over 260 million views. Further accolades from Google include America's Got Talent being named as one of the Top Trending Reality TV Shows for 2017, and AGT runner-up Angelica Hale's YouTube page named as one of the Top Trending YouTube Channels of the year.
