HOW YOUTUBE PREDICTS BOX OFFICE WINNERS

Want to know which movie will do best at the box office this weekend? Well, forget about box-office pundits and check out the number of people who are viewing movie trailers on YouTube. Those numbers can be accurate 94 percent of the time. In a study released on Thursday by Google, YouTube’s owner, researchers concluded that moviegoers typically consult 13 sources before deciding what they’re going to see at theaters over the weekend, but that the strongest predictor was “trailer search volume.” On weekends when a highly promoted blockbuster is set to debut, moviegoers will likely type in the title of the movie in their online searches. On the other hand, if it’s a particularly slow weekend, they’ll type in such generic phrases as “new movie” or “movie tickets.”