In our increasingly data-driven world, “Year in Review” publications have captivated us as consumers with insightful (and sometimes embarrassing) individual summaries of the past year as defined by the songs we listened to, the workouts we completed, and the travel we embarked upon. This Year in Review analysis looks at the collective: how analyzing every second of television content in 2021 provides insight into key trends in pop culture.
Hive powers Mensio, a media intelligence platform that provides always-on, AI-powered measurement of in-content exposure for 7,000+ brands across 24/7 programming on 100+ national TV networks and major regional sports networks. Mensio enables monitoring of brand exposure from sponsorship activations, product placement, and other in-content exposures, reporting occurrences, share of voice, and valuation.
To focus on “earned” exposure, this analysis excludes brand exposure within sports programming and commercial breaks. Here are the trends we saw in 2021.

1. We continued to be reminded that we were still in a pandemic

• COVID propelled Purell into the public conversation in 2020, earning $1.3M in equivalent media value from product exposure on tables everywhere from news to reality TV. While the value of exposures dropped by a third in 2021, Purell remained a part of the conversation – including as a featured subject in multiple Saturday Night Live skits during the year. The almost $900K in equivalent media value Purell earned in 2021 was still almost 3X what the brand earned in 2019.

• Vaccine manufacturers such as Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson also earned significant in-content media exposure as vaccines were rolled out. Among the set, Pfizer earned the most value from in-content exposure with ~$3.2M in 2021 after earning ~$4.2M in 2020. Like Purell, Pfizer and other vaccine manufacturers became part of the zeitgeist with increasing integration into comedy programs like Saturday Night Live and Adam Ruins Everything.

2. You weren’t the only one on Zoom

• From branded video interviews on news programs to native integrations captured on reality TV, Zoom’s logo achieved ~8.5x as much TV presence in 2021 compared to 2019. Zoom’s exposure in 2021 dropped 13% from 2020, however, perhaps as an indicator of the slow return to in-person life.

• You also weren’t the only one who upgraded your video conferencing equipment. Audio manufacturer Shure was a beneficiary of this trend: though Shure saw a 2.6x increase in exposures from 2019 to 2020, their high-tech microphones really took off in 2021 with a 6.7x increase over 2019.

3. You also weren’t the only one on TikTok

• TikTok continued its explosive growth, achieving a ~270x increase in exposures on TV from 2019 to 2021. This appears to have come at the expense of other social media platforms, with TikTok posts increasingly supplanting posts from other sites. While the total estimated value of TikTok’s TV exposures in 2021 still greatly lags incumbent platforms (i.e., only 20% of the value of Facebook’s in-content brand exposure), all other major social platforms decreased in total exposures during those same 2 years. Both Facebook and Instagram decreased TV exposure by ~40% compared to 2019, suggesting that we are watching a social media revolution unfold.

4. You weren’t the only one with new at-home hobbies either

• Peloton was the biggest winner in the at-home workout category. While some of the ~54% year-over-year increase in onscreen exposure came from news coverage of the company’s treadmill recall and financial performance, exposure in reality shows increased by 90% in 2021 vs. 2020, illustrating the brand’s integration into everyday life.

• 2021 could also be characterized as the year of the “retail investor”. Storylines included the rise of ‘meme stock’ GameStop, which had one of the highest increases in estimated on-TV value across all brands, from $96K in 2020 to $3.1M in 2021 (~32x). Trading platform Robinhood benefited with a 11x increase in exposures, with most chatter surrounding its role in enabling GameStop and AMC trades.