Oprah’s interview of Meghan Markle made international headlines. According to the Wall Street Journal about 17.1 million people tuned in to watch as it was airing Sunday night. After the fact, the interview was available to watch for free on CBS. Did this have an impact on the downloads of the CBS app?
The answer is a definite yes. The CBS app experienced a jump in downloads. This started in the few days after the interview. You can see that many eager watchers were trying to get the scoop on what the ex-royals had to say.
Downloads and Category rankings for the US CBS app jumped during this time. They have only just started to dip back down after the fact.
Ratings and reviews of the app also indicate that users were there to get the scoop on Meghan and Harry.
These reviews are not all positive. According to the reviews, many of the users who downloaded the app in order to watch the show were disappointed. The reviews reflect problems with the video stopping and their spot not being saved. There are also many comments mentioning ads.
However, it does go to show that this event was a positive one for the app. And what about those who wanted to watch the interview from abroad and could not from CBS? Was there a bump in VPN downloads to match?
We can see an incline in free users on the day after the program (orange and black) aired. This is followed by an incline in paid users (blue and green). This graph might indicate to us that the CBS app got new subscribers from people who tried their VPN for the interview and then decided that they liked having access to global content.
If you want to follow the ups and downs of other news apps or see if CBS updates their app in response to the feedback, sign up for a demo.
