Initial Public Offerings are one of the biggest moments in a company’s history. The day is a coming out party of sorts — the company raises its profile to new heights and earns capital in the process. But how much more coverage do they get compared to other big company events, like a product launch?

Last week Roku had a very successful IPO, with with shares trading 67 percent higher than the asking price, earning the company a valuation of $1.3 billion. The newly public company followed up this success by launching a new 4K streaming stick to better compete with the likes of Apple TV, Chromecast and Amazon Fire. Both events captured the attention of the media, but did the product launch receive wider coverage than usual due to the halo effect of the successful IPO? Let’s take a look these two events and see how the numbers stack up next to Roku’s new OS release from November 2016.

Both the IPO and 2017 product release captured a little under 50 percent Share of Voice when compared to competitors (46 percent and 45 percent respectively), but the events differed in terms of overall sentiment. News that Roku shares had spiked 68 percent drove a 15 percent increase in positive sentiment, while the product release led managed a still respectable 58 percent positive sentiment, an increase of 8 percent on the previous day. Roku’s November 2016 product launch only managed to capture 33 percent of share of voice.

The Initial Public Offering generated 1.5 thousand more mentions than the product release. These mentions also came from different sources — the announcement of the new streaming stick generated 3.3 percent of its mentions from video, which was double the amount of mentions from video associated with the IPO. While these numbers were comparable, the news of going public reached a far wider audience. Messages around the Roku going public garnered 330 million impressions, compared to 243 million for the release of the release of the new Roku stick. The OS release from last year reached nowhere near these numbers managing only 4,009 mentions and 58 million impressions.

Percentage of media mentions by channel

Twitter News Blog Facebook Video Lexis Nexis Instagram
IPO 82% 9.9% 1.9% 2.5% 1.6% 0.9% 0.4%
Product release 78.9% 11.8% 3.4% 0.5% 3.3% 1.1% 0.9%

 

As is to be expected, the types of publications covering the two events differed slightly. Reuters was the most influential outlet for both events, yet the IPO was covered by financial based publications like Fortune, Nasdaq, CNN Money Investing and Fox Business. The product launch had a much greater technology publication slant, with Wired, TechCrunch, CNET and Mashable showing up as some of the top influencers. The level of influencer involved in both of these stories was far higher than those that covered the 2016 OS update. The average influencer score of the top 10 influencers for 2016 release was 86.9, compared to 95.6 for the 2017 product release.

There were also differences in the topics discussed. The IPO had far more mentions for CEO Anthony Wood, while (unsurprisingly) the product announcement placed a far greater emphasis on the product, with remote, Roku Ultra, Roku TV, Roku Express and Roku Player mentioned a combined 1,937 times.

A successful IPO can create a halo effect for a company that can generate momentum for upcoming company events, amplifying the coverage and earning free media for the brand in the process. Enterprises are increasingly understanding the importance of monitoring this information to provide instant feedback on brand reputation, new product features and the success of campaigns.

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