Barack-Roll
My brother spotted this (hilarious, and increasing in popularity):
For the uninitiated, this is a variation of the “Rick-Roll.”
The Key To Rapturing Fickle Online Video Audiences: Quantity
About a month ago, we launched a “Top 40″ list of the users getting the most views from videos deployed by us (an admittedly biased list, but an interesting one). We will be releasing an updated list shortly, but it’s worth pondering: what is the key to their success? Great content, for one. An additional insight came after we released our recent research on “Online Video’s Short Shelf Life.” A blogger savvily pointed out that most successful content creators already understood that online video fans have a short attention span, and thus put out a high quantity of videos.
Curious if that was actually the case, I tested it using our Top 40 list, and found it to be largely true. In the month of June, Chris Pirillo (#2 on our list), deployed 803 videos. Similarly, mojosupreme (#6) put out about 691. Further on down the list, Vlaze media (#35), put out a decidedly humbler 74 videos, and Sony (#40) deployed 32–and so on.
The data shows the brilliance of this. Since average online video viewership tends to peak on day three, putting out videos often allows producers to constantly ride the highest point of the wave. While individual videos rise and fall fast, a given producer can always have a steady audience.
Sphere: Related ContentTalking Heads TV Interview
I feel vain posting this, but here is an interview I gave this morning with Talking Head TV that I promised I would post on our blog. Some questions, like “what makes a video go viral?” or “what is the kiss of death?” are questions that we get asked a lot and don’t fully know the answers to (if we did, we’d be very wealthy!). However, I talk about our new study, “Online Video’s Short Shelf Life,” which looks at macro-trends (most videos don’t randomly go viral, it turns out), which was recently featured in Mashable!, Alley Insider, GIGaom and elsewhere. One additional insight from the study that we hadn’t thought of is pointed out by HyveUp: intuitively recognizing video’s short shelf life, many of the most-viewed content creators “do not hesitate to launch 3 to 5 videos a day.” Indeed.
TubeMogul Top 40
About a week ago, our friends at Next New Networks called looking for a viewership metric to feature in their then-forthcoming press release (now abuzz) highlighting their new deals with Hulu, Yahoo! and MetaCafe. After running a few SQL queries, we determined that, of videos deployed by TubeMogul out to multiple sites, Next New Networks gets the most views. We found this so interesting (and hopefully others do too), that we are now publishing the information in a “Top 40″ list, to be updated monthly as people move up and down the rankings. Other contenders likely to compete for the top spot: For Your Imagination, Vuguru, CBS and WatchMojo.
3 comments June 25th, 2008
Is the Long Tail BS?
We recently categorized all of our users (which now number over 25,000). The categorization was undertaken at the request of several specialty video sites that we deploy videos to that have strict editorial standards (Howcast only wants how-to videos, Crackle professionally-produced content, YouTube everything under the sun, etc.). While the tiering was qualitative, it yielded some interesting quantitative insights:
Since this data is about TubeMogul users, there’s a clear selection bias here in favor of savvier content creators (i.e. networks, marketers), who are probably more likely to know about TubeMogul than the casual video uploader. In any case, interesting (we hope).
Sphere: Related Content1 comment June 5th, 2008
We’re On Twitter (Finally)
Whether it’s leaking news as it happens (i.e. new sites) or posting foosball tournament results, we are on Twitter and broadcasting our “tweets” to the world. CHECK US OUT.
Sphere: Related ContentOuting Corporate-Seeded Viral Videos
In writing a recent article for Alley Insider, Michael asked us if there are any stealth viral video campaigns floating around out there that he could force out of the closet. After consulting our database (which houses over 25,000 content creators) and clicking around, we think (but aren’t certain) that this video, which conspicuously features Stella Artois (owned by mega-conglomerate InBev), is a total shill (not that that’s a bad thing):
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The irony here is that “outing” these videos as ads often gets as much buzz as when the video went viral in the first place.
Integration With 5min.com
Today, we announced distribution and analytics integration for 5min.com, a “Life Videopedia” (think Wikipedia for videos) that features short (under “5min”) video solutions to practical questions of all types. What really sets 5min apart is its Smart Player (below), which allows viewers to watch a video in slow motion, frame by frame, zoomed in and out, as well as giving the video creator the option to make a storyboard that helps others better understand the demonstration. A favorite video from their site:
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