Riding a ramped-up marketing budget that included a cool $500,000 earmarked for social media campaigns aimed at attracting millennial viewers, organizers of Hollywood?s biggest night pulled out all the stops to win younger viewers on mobile who could have been put off by a slew of art-film nominations. The social media results suggested how traditional media properties can leverage mobile to remain relevant in the public?s mind.

?I really liked how Facebook posted the images of the stars' looks in dresses and suits in the Facebook feed,? said Dana Loberg, co-founder of San Jose, CA-based startup MovieLaLa, a social network enabling movie fans to discover upcoming movies through their friends and favorite stars.

?It was super easy to slide the images across and see all the pictures,? she said. ?You could also see your friends' reactions to the winners and losers, which was really interesting. 

?People's reactions on Twitter and Facebook really paint the story of what's happening throughout the Oscars,? she said. ?It's fun to capture what your friends or acquaintances are saying throughout the show.?

Though ratings were low, second-screen engagement was higher than ever. However, that phenomenon was not due to anything ABC or the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did specifically, the budget boost notwithstanding.

?It?s from the natural progression of how the audience consumes media today,? said Arthur Chan, executive vice president for digital marketing at Palisades MediaGroup, an independent, full-service ad agency with offices in Santa Monica, CA and San Francisco. 

?We didn?t see much trending via social outside of the Lego Oscar statue,? he said. ?Content is still king.? 

Social media spend for the event jumped 82 percent as the non profit Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made a bid to woo younger viewers, particularly millennials who resist traditional media and marketing campaigns.

The social media push was aimed at helping this year?s Oscars match the viewership figures from last year?s Ellen DeGeneres-hosted show. 

It missed the mark by a mile.

The Neil Patrick Harris-hosted show drew 36.6 million viewers and a 10.8 rating among adults 18-49 ? weak enough for a 17 percent drop from 2014 and the worst numbers for the globally watched event sine 2008. 

The 2014 installment of the Oscars show drew 45 million viewers and a 12.9 rating among adults 18-to-49. 

The budget for this year?s show included $73,000 for promotions on Facebook and Twitter and $37,000 for Instagram. 

At the network?s urging, an avalanche of Oscar-related tweets poured out of the hashtag, #oscars2015, all night, more than could be reasonably consumed at once. Just the same, tweets fell 47 percent from a year ago.

?I don't think there can ever be too many tweets,? Ms. Loberg said. ?We've all learned by now how to filter tweets by what we want to read and it's easy to skim through the topics from your feed. 

?Plus, it's not like all the people you're following are tweeting about the Oscars,? she said. ?So you always get a great mix of real-time Oscar tweets along with relevant news.? 

As traditional TV marketers are well aware, using Facebook and Twitter in mobile is a way to follow the three-hour Oscars broadcast without having to sit through commercials. The availability of social media could actually have caused the show's viewership ratings to go down. 

?Curation is the future when it comes to content consumption, as a way to mitigate lost time and frustration with traditional methods of consuming content, that is, TV,? Ms. Loberg said.

?For me, I'm really excited to see traditional marketers spending more money in mobile and social media to make it relevant for younger viewers,? she said. ?This makes a whole lot of sense with the trend of the population on a global scale. 

?Millennials watch everything on their mobile phones or iPads out of convenience,? she said. ?They become aware and engage with content on their social apps, so reaching younger demos in mobile is essential for sustaining businesses in this era.?

While ABC?s promoted ?backstage? content streaming from the network?s mobile application consisted mainly of superfluous commentary on images shown well behind the live TV broadcast, based on a reporter?s view early in the show, social media still delivered what was promised. 

?I don't think I would have seen any of the Oscars if I hadn't been on Facebook and Twitter last night,? Ms. Loberg said. ?And I'm sure on Tumblr and other networks, millennials likely captured the best snippets of the show."