Tag Archives: research

Most Popular YouTube Stars: Rankings, Stats and Trends

My last post about TheStation made me revisit the most-subscribed YouTube “stars” and channels to see what’s changed.

Who are the most-viewed, most-subscribed and most popular people on YouTube? Here are some trends, stats and sources for additional information.

First some trends:

  • We’re still seeing YouTube’s “most subscribed” list (more important than “most viewed” because it eliminates one-hit wonders) largely dominated not by professionals but individuals. In the top ten list are only 3 “professional” channels (machinima, Jonas Brothers and Universal). The rest are people like Fred, Nigahiga, ShaneDawsonTV, KevJumba, WhatTheBuckShow and VenetianPrincess. These are amateurs with recurring audiences, but only some have agents.
  • The packaged content (CollegeHumor) is not as popular as individual creators because people continue to become active on YouTube from a social context… picking their favorites as “virtual friends” as opposed to gravitating to the best content (TheOnion). I did not think this would continue to be the case in 2009, as online-video viewing moves mainstream.
  • The channels that move rapidly up this “most subscribed” list are typically spawned from already-popular channels. TheStation almost immediately reached the top 20 because the collective “web stars” promoted it. Likewise, when a popular YouTuber like ShaneDawson creates a second account (ShaneDawsonTV2) it rises quickly up the ranks. The easiest way to get noticed on YouTube quickly is by appearing in a popular creator’s video, as the top creators rarely voluntarily “shout out” (advertise) someone else’s channel.
  • As a result of the above trend, some widely known creators like Chocolate Rain singer TayZonday are falling off the top 100 list even as his views and subscribers continues to grow. Others slip because they lose touch with their fan base, or create videos less frequently. As an example, I’m happy to get about 250,000 views per day (as Nalts)… but not happy I’m always teetering at the bottom of the top 100 list.
  • The mix of most-popular is primarily “vloggers” (individuals talking to the camera), followed by musicians and comedians. Broadly speaking, your chances are higher of being a most-subscribed YouTuber if you’re Asian, sexy, funny, or gay. Toss in a few curse words and some raucous content and you’re golden.

Some resources for tracking trends and stats:

Anyone have any other sites I should add? Frankly I’m surprised there aren’t easier-to-find websites that collect and share data (WillofDC uses a website to report winners and losers, but I don’t know what it is.

You Spend More Time Watching Online Videos Than Having Sex

laptop versus sex

If you’re an average online-video watcher, then today you’ll watch about 2 videos, and spend 6 minutes doing so. You’ll most likely be on YouTube, but if you’re watching long-form television on Hulu you’re probably skewing the average by watching for much longer per session/view.

People watching online video in the U.S. now watch more than three hours per month, according to new data from Nielsen Online. Studies suggest people, on average, have sex once a week. My sources on sexual frequency and duration are a bit sketchy here, so you can do your own digging.

So, friends, you’re probably watching online-videos for more time each month than you are having sex — depending, of course, on whether you’re one of those 2.7 minute “slam bam thank you mam” YouTube people, or if you prefer the longer forplay of “Hulu-like” engagements.

And I’m not sure all of that online-video viewing is going to help you in the sex department, but it’s a more reliable, albeit often less climaxic, alternative.

Check out Stephen Shankland’s “Online Viewing Clears Three Hours Per Month.”  Neilsen is the source. Do you know how silly that headline will look by the end of the year? First, we’ll have a more difficult time what’s occuring “online” versus “offline” as devices merge. Second, because that three hours will grow dramatically as people begin to consume an episode of Lost (which is, by my crude calculations, roughly the same time it would take to consume about 20 or so short videos on YouTube).

Here are some other notable points from Shanland, and a pretty chart so you can see that YouTube is dominating viewers and videos viewed. But this is going to change when we look at duration spent per site. After all, Hulu has longer-form content, and Yahoo’s 25 million users could, with a little prompting by Yahoo, start watching more video. Hulu has more ad inventory than it has sold, and one can only assume the ad inventory isn’t sufficient for Yahoo to compel its visitors to consume video. Or perpahs Yahoo visitors are busy enjoying display ads and drinking their Tabs or Mr. Pibbs.

  • March viewing rose 13 percent to 191 minutes.   Total video streams viewed increased 9 percent from 8.9 billion to 9.7 billion. And the number of videos per user grew 7 percent from about 70 to 74. 
  • If time spent is going up faster than videos streamed, that means a) we’re tolerating 2.7-minute YouTube clips, or b) Longer form content is skewing the average, and we’re continuing to expect our YouTube clips to be 2-3 minutes. I suspect the latter, but Neilsen and the Shankenizer aren’t saying. video share by website

The market share:

  1. Google’s YouTube continues to dominate the category, with 5.5 billion videos and 89 million people using the service in the U.S.
  2. Hulu is in second place with 348 million videos and 9 million users.
  3. Yahoo is in third place with 232 million videos, but it’s got more users than Hulu, about 25 million users.
  4. Revver is not ranking.

 

Coca Cola and Google/YouTube to Publish Video ROI Study

Coke and Google are soon to publish ROI data on a campaign in Germany that includes online video. The study isolates individuals who were not exposed to television but did see YouTube promotion, and reports incremental consumption data by various digital channels. Paid search leads, of course, and YouTube ranks high (far above banners, which showed almost no impact… and outdoor advertising).

Jens Monsees, who heads consumer goods and healthcare at Google in Spain, teased the audience with info, but results are to be published jointly by Coke and Google. Monsees was speaking at Exlpharma.com’s “Digital Pharma Europe” in Barcelona today.

It’s about time we had a marketing mix study that includes online video, and I look forward to seeing the details. BTW- the average YouTube viewer is 31 years old.

10 Decent Reasons Online Video Ads ‘r Recession Resistant

Oh shut up about the stupid recession, you big whiner. I’m sick of hearing about it — and just because it’s an economic depression doesn’t mean we all have to get clinically depressed.  

Seriously. You’re beginning to sound like that annoying friend who’s always complaining about health problems… The co-worker or neighbor who doesn’t know that the only right answer to “how are you?” is “fine.”

Yes, online advertising is soft. But here are 10 plus reasons online-video will survive and thrive. Read these because I had to think so hard for some of them that I popped one of my 87 remaining brain cells. The statistics, of course, are 97% made up.

Send these to your boss, customers, clients and peers. Or print them and shove ’em up someone’s profusely pessimistic discard hole. Yeah you heard me.

  1. The audience is rapidly growing and ads work 41% better better if they reach people.
  2. The niche content provides better targeting (than 84% of non targeted spending). 
  3. The cost of entry is cheap (unless you piss away $250K on a bunch of “viral video Hail Mary’s” that you post on that micro site… equivalent to a billboard in your basement).
  4. Amateur creators have huge audiences, and are hungry. They’re also really connected with audiences and influential. Your banner ad isn’t as lucky.
  5. I like to eat stamp collections but not collectors.
  6. Video is 93% more visceral and memorable than even rich-media. If I remember your product I’m 29% less likely to forget about it and not buy it.
  7. I was fooling around with features on my YouTube channel, and decided to make my account invisible because I feel like it. That’s a sidebar.
  8. Brands will need recession-proof innovation… instead of interruption ads, they’ll partner with creators who already have huge audiences, and get great deals. Add up the top few dozen YouTube stars and you’ll find they get more daily views than many of the media sites combined. Shoot I get around 100,000 viewers a day and I suck the funny right out of the web.
  9. There is no reason 9 or 13. There’s a 33% chance you won’t notice that because you’re scanning.
  10. Brand leaders will still want to innovate (73% more than the control, which included that fat guy you work with that twitches out about “process” whenever he hears about change). Grant, they will be 41% more selective than this year and 88% than during The Bubble. So dump the stupid unscalable crap (like another useless Facebook widgets and those pitiful Second Life pilots). They’re like the PR people during layoffs. They’ll be first to go.
  11. People still need customers or sales tend to go down by 29% or more.
  12. Because I said so, and I’m a viral video genius. Check Wikipedia if you don’t believe me. There’s a 51% chance you’ve never heard of Wikipedia.

Research Study Profiles “Engaged” Online-Video Viewers

ReelSEO has a nice post about a recent Forrester & Veoh study that characterized the 40% of us “engaged viewers” that watch about 75% of the online-videos. The online-video users, like web surfers, will soon resemble the general population. But for now we’re a unique bunch, and the post has some takeaways for advertisers… advertainment is advised.

Is Online-Video Recession Proof?

Online-video advertising is still dwarfed by television advertising. But fear not the recession, online video advocates! Fear not these gloomy photos of the depression that you’re seeing on all of the weekly magazines. And this is according to  Christine Beardsell from Digitas writes in a ClickZ article.

Here are three reasons Beardsell says online video advertising will come out ahead during an economic downturn. Parenthetically, search “recession” on Google Trends to see how freaked people are getting.

  1. No Longer Experimental. Past economic crises often led CMOs to cut back on experimental advertising, and they rely on the skills and responsibilities they’ve traditionally relied upon… as Keith Bobier, senior director of marketing at Unilever, put it: “We are not pulling in the reigns at all…there is nothing experimental about this for us.” In fact, during financial struggles, aren’t the customer-centric things exactly what brands and their customers need most?
  2. Possible, Affordable Optimization: If you’re a marketing executive given the option to either make two new TV spots for the year… or create several video brand content experiences throughout the year that can guarantee measurable, detailed, optimized results and build engagement with your customer, which option would you choose? You get less for more when it comes to TV spots.
  3. Less Buying, More Conversation: While there may be a lot less money to spend when money is tight, that doesn’t necessarily mean people will spend less time engaging with your brand. In fact, frugal spending often means longer hours researching products and discussing those products with trusted friends and family. And with research and conversations now happening predominately online, brands more than ever have the opportunity to join these discussions and help customers make smart purchasing decisions.

I’d add two things. When I tighten my marketing budget, I tend to focus on squeezing down the largest spend, and not starve innovation. So as long as online-video ads provide metrics (see Daisy Whitney’s article on TubeMogul and Visible Measures) then they’re not going to be the first part of the mix that’s cut.

The Great Social-Media Consumption Project: Open Mic Time!

As you may know, we have two audiences for WillVideoforFood:

  1. Online-video industry advocates (agencies, bloggers, marketers, media). These people quietly graze for stories, but rarely interact.
  2. The online-video junkies and Nalts watchers. These folks are more active on the web, and usually keep this blog alive with a clever thread of comments– which is more interesting than the blog itself.

Well guess what? It’s “open mic” time for the latter group, and the former group can listen carefully as if they’re watching a focus-group behind a 2-way mirror! Let’s learn how hard-core online junkies daily consume media and interact with friends, colleagues and family.

You see, our media consumption patterns have changed radically in recent months and years. We don’t wake up and watch morning shows, and then check e-mail (unless you’re wifeofnalts). Instead, we consume via a customized, electronic intravanious drip of what and who important to us via RSS, e-mail, YouTube, blogs, and social-networking applications.

I encourage the curious to read the thread below. Anyone can post comments, but I hope all readers will take note of the insights below. I may try to summarize them in a future post:

  • What’s a typical day for you on the computer? What do you most look forward to, and how do you consume the information?
  • What’s changed most in the past year? Do you use e-mail less/more, or have new destinations you love?
  • How do you keep current on videos, news or new sites/tools that interest you? Do you find them, and share them? Or does someone you know help you find them? How on EARTH do you know so quickly when I post a new video? Do you use Google alerts to track certain words (like your name or a company name)?
  • What advice would you have to people who are trying to engage more in Web 2.0, social media, online-video and other communication tools?

I’ll start with my own typical day (see more). You may want to write your own description before reading mine so it doesn’t bias you…

Continue reading The Great Social-Media Consumption Project: Open Mic Time!

Online-Video Ad Spend: Optimistic But Still “Sculpting Fog”

Don’t get depressed about the economy folks. Even wrecklessly stupid brands are squeezing old-media spending in favor of paid search, targeted interactive advertising, and … yes… even online video.

Marketing and advertising spend on online video has a good future. Even though it’s a small sliver of online spending and difficult to measure (slicing fog), Uncle Nalts has some ideas for the industry that can help. I’ve even numbered them below, but let’s look at the problem first.

Today’s eMarketer reports that LiveRail (LiveRail is a video ad server, so take this with a grain of salt) estimates 2010 at $1.4 billion, up from a 2008 spend of about $619 million. eMarketer is a bit more conservative (and recently downgraded its forecast), but may not be counting special programs… for instance, it’s hard to measure sponsorships that are unique to a creator or a website. Nonetheless, most agree that online-video represents just 2% of online spending, which is asburdly low. It reminds me of how slow media buyers were to capitalize on paid search in the early 2000s. I need to say that again. It reminds me of how slow media buyers were to capitalize on paid search in the early 2000s.

Daisy Whitney wrote a nice article summarizing the issues with measuring the online-video advertising. Uncle Nalts spoke to Whitney, but she had tossed her phone in the bathtub before he got his points across… Whitney reports that IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau – see its blog) likes its methodolgy for capturing spending.  IAB measures “digital video commercials” or “TV-like advertisements” that appear before, during or after a variety of content, but not brand integration. “We believe we are capturing the biggest part of a growing market,” said David Doty, senior VP, thought leadership and marketing, at IAB.

Clients for whom Nalts has done promotional videos, or consultingI couldn’t disagree more. By IAB’s definition, I make zero income on online-video advertising. That’s because my YouTube Partner revenue is based on “InVideo” ads that presumably don’t meet IAB’s definition. And certainly the low income CPM-based “display creative” around my videos is not captured in that spend. But as grateful as I am about YouTube sharing advertising revenue, I make far more money through custom videos (aka sponsored videos).

What are sponsored videos? See this page for examples of entertaining videos that have subtle brand messages. My fellow creators do more subtle “product placement” for money, but I haven’t messed with that yet because I fear backlash if I’m not transparent. And I don’t want someone thinking I’m getting paid by Coke if I take a swig in a video. Even though I totally would if my friend Mike at Coke Interactive would throw be a friggin’ bone.

So what do we need to spur further uptake in online-video advertising?

  1. Measure it more precisely to help brands understand how to allocate their spend, and increase online-video advertising from 2% to something closer to 10%.
  2. Conduct more studies that show video advertising works — even if it’s surrounding (gasp) amateur or consumer-generated content.
  3. Encourage experimental marketers who are not only open to new channels, but pressure agencies to identify creative options so they’re not lost in the clutter.
  4. Reward agencies for exploring new vehicles to reach target consumers when they’re engaged in their experience (and not brain dead on the couch). The inventory is there, folks, but we’re not going to solve the problem by hiring stupid CPM media buyers that are recently graduated, hungover and trying to find a new boyfriend.

Televisions Obsolete. Online Video Takes Over.

No I’m just kidding. Television isn’t dead yet (but I’ll let you know when it is).

You didn’t waste money on that high definition set, and you advertising executives still have a little shelf life.

But here’s a new tidbit of research that verifies that online-video consumption is eating into our television viewing time. Courtesy of NewTeeVee (who I’m quoting way too often since they became my top RSS on iGoogle) and the folks from the Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI) (click here for full report via pdf):

Based on its tracking of primetime content across the major networks, IMMI has generally found that up to 20% of episodic content viewing occurs online, depending on the genre of the content
and the amount of time the show has been on the air. This amount is higher now, than last Fall
and in a few cases, is higher even than DVR viewing of the broadcast content.

This shift won’t soon reverse, or continue slowly. So that means it’s officially time to find a viable advertising model for free online video (and explore a fair paid model too). :

Try forcing a long preroll, and the advertisers have bigger problems than DVRs allowing people to zip through 30 and 60s (as if they weren’t running off to pee before time-shifting). But the good news is that the music industry helped us transition from copyright pirates into, to some extent, people too lazy to hunt and download free music. In time, it will be easier to pay a small fee or accept some ads as long as I can watch good quality video on my own time.

Now that the industry is maturing, watch for: bigger audiences, a better ad model, and more professional content. The amateurs are already losing share to professionals (check the YouTube most subscribed charts for proof), but the pie is continuing to grow. And as long as the economy doesn’t starve marketing innovative budgets (and force marketers to resort to proven but dying media) then I’m still bullish on the opportunities for advertisers, creators and audiences.

Keep in mind the pretty charts by IMMI are a little deceptive. Like this ‘ere chart. It does not tell us that 50% of an average American’s time is moving to online video. Rather it says that half of us — upon being assaulted by a survey — acknowledge that, at some point, we looked to the Internet in lieu of television. I’m surprised that number isn’t higher. Most of us early adopters are probably close to 50/50 online-video vs. television right now.

But keep in mind that even though we’re all still watching television, our brains are clinically dead during this time (well, maybe just more dead than when we’re watching online video or pretending to care about the person rambling in that meeting).

 

Study Shows People Who Don’t Watch Online Videos Are… Boring

zipster loco mama terryA recent study shows that the shrinking percent of US citizens that don’t watch online-video regularly are more likely (by 45%) to be boring than their video-watching counterparts. This study, mind you, is based not on a significant N or any official methodology. It’s just based on my own experience.

For example, here’s a result of last evening with Zipster08 and ChristopherMast. It’s a video called “Loco Mama and the Boys from the Hood.” Call them crazy, but don’t call them boring.

Incidentally, Mast (an Indie singer and nurse) is “couch surfing” with the Nalts family this week, and documenting every waking moment. Again- call it what you will, but it’s not boring.

And, all things being equal, life is more interesting when it’s not boring.