After raising $175 million last March at a flat $16 billion valuation over the year prior, Snapchat is reportedly in the midst of yet another funding round. The ephemeral messaging app is currently raising an additional $200 million at a $20 billion to $22.7 billion valuation, TechCrunch reports.
The new funding is actually a “follow-on” to March’s Series F, according to TechCrunch, and would bring total venture funds raised by Snapchat thus far to $1.6 billion. “The startup is ’always raising’ on a ‘rolling’ basis, partly because investors are so interested,” according to TechCrunch, which cited an investor close to the company. Existing investors — like Fidelity, which led Snapchat’s Series F — will reportedly participate in the latest round, in addition to Alibaba, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and more.
Sources close to the company are also speculating about how it might allocate funds in coming years. They point to potential opportunities in international expansion, targeting wider demographics, new kinds of ads, paid services, and even entirely new products. Sources also told TechCrunch that the company is considering launches in the hardware space.
Snapchat says its 100 million daily users clock 10 billion video views every day, (which is up from 8 billion daily views in February), and also notes that one-third of its users are creating content every day with its Stories feature. Snapchat reportedly purchasedBitmoji maker Bitstrips in a $100 million deal last March.
Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos announced in a company blog post today that the agreement the streaming giant forged with Disney back in 2012 will finally start to bear fruit.
“From September onwards,” he writes, “Netflix will become the exclusive U.S. pay TV home of the latest films from Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Pixar.” This means that Netflix will stream all Disney films released in 2016 and beyond within the same window that they would normally air on pay TV networks like HBO, Showtime, and Starz. This time frame, roughly seven to nine months after a film’s theatrical release, also refers to the window after films are made available for purchase or rental.
Netflix is paying $300 million per year for the privilege, according to reports, and the deal will last for a total of three years. Starz previously had rights to all of Disney’s films within this window.
At the same time, Netflix announced a slew of new titles that are slated to arrive this summer — given that movie watch time in the U.S. typically increases by up to 20% over Memorial Day Weekend, according to Sarandos. On Friday, Netflix’s second Adam Sandler film, The Do Over, will premiere. And, in coming months, Netflix will premiere titles such as The Fundamentals of Caring and Tallulah — original films that it picked up at Sundance — as well as Brahman Naman, which it describes as American Pie set in India in the 1980s.
In August, Netflix will premiere The Little Prince, which it picked up after Paramount suddenly scrapped the animated film’s theatrical release. In the fall, original titles Mascots, a comedy helmed by Chirstopher Guest, and War Machine, a military comedy starring Brad Pitt, are also set to debut.
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly and monthly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by OpenSlate. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given timeframe. You can check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every weekby clicking right here.]
It’s time for another monthly installment of our Tubefilter Top 100 Most Viewed YouTube Gaming Channels Chart and the usual contender is in the top spot.
Chart Toppers
TheDiamondMinecart is in first place for the fifth month in a row. The UK-based gaming channel with an affinity for Minecraft known to fans as DanTDM took a 6% hit in its monthly view count, but still scored just about 317.2 million views in the 30 days of April. In a close-ish second place is PewDiePie. Felix Kjellberg’s gaming channel was up 2% on the month to score more than 298 million views.
PopularMMos is still next up in third place. The top US-based gamer on the chart was down a semi-significant 15% in views to bottom out at 235.4 million. That was barely enough to hold off JackSepticEye. The Irish gamer ended the month just shy of 235.3 million views.
And rounding out the Top 5 is JuegaGerman. The gaming channel of the incredibly popular YouTube star Germán Garmendia saw a massive 45% uptick in views to amass more than 230.9 million views during the month.
Top Gainers
The honor of one of our Top Gainers this month goes to Lele.
It’s been a couple of months since Lele made an appearance. But now the channel that’s home to the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Republic-of-Congo-born, Minnesota-raised, Chile-residing, twentysomething Lenay Chantelle Olsen’s gaming and vlogging videos is back on the chart in commanding fashion. A steady supply of Spanish-language, mostly Minecraft gameplay videos (and at least one that included the aforementioned gaming star Germán Garmendia) helped the channel to a 110% month-over-month increase in views, more than 36.7 million views on the month, and the #72 spot on the worldwide gaming chart.
Channel Distribution
The Top 100 Most Viewed YouTube Gaming Channels this month amassed in aggregate a total of 7,273,058,692 . Here’s a look at the distribution of those channels broken down by the most-represented YouTube Multi-Channel Networks on the chart:
Maker Studios:25 channels in the Top 100, with TheDiamondMinecart at #1.
Machinima:11 channels in the Top 100, with JuegaGerman at #5.
BroadbandTV, Divimove: 7 channels each in the Top 100, with BBTV’s fernanfloo at #8 Divimove’s elrubiusOMG at #12.
Omnia Media Co.: 6 channels in the Top 100, with LeafyIsHere at #22.
Fullscreen, VSP Group: 5 channels each in the Top 100 with Fullscreen’s PopularMMOs at #3 and VSP Group’s В Гостях У FrostA at #36.
Jetpak: 4 channels in the Top 100, with VanossGaming at #6.
Curse, Sandbox, StyleHaul, XMediaDigital: 2 channels each in the Top 100 with Curse’s EthanGamerTV at #46, Sandbox’s 태경 TV at #73, StyleHaul’s Little Carly Minecraft at #58, and XMediaDigital’s TheBrainDit at #33.
And here’s a look into the distribution of this month’s Top 100 by country of origin:
United States: 29 channels in the Top 100.
Great Britain: 12 channels in the Top 100.
Brazil, Spain: 8 channels each in the Top 100..
Japan, Russia: 5 channels each in the Top 100.
Ireland: 4 channels in the Top 100.
Australia, Chile, Germany, Netherlands: 3 channels each in the Top 100.
Canada, Italy, South Korea, Ukraine: 2 channels each in the Top 100.
El Salvador, Finland, France, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand:1 channel each in the Top 100.
OpenSlate is a video content analytics platform that tracks more than 800,000 YouTube video channels and measures their ability to attract, engage and influence an audience. By providing one consistent measure of quality – the SlateScore™ – OpenSlate helps marketers, producers and agencies hone their online video marketing strategy.
Tiltify is the first online platform created to allow gamers to crowdfund for the charity of their choice using their favorite games.
BuzzFeed executive producer Henry Goldman is moving from Los Angeles to New York to lead a team within the media giant’s east coast headquarters that will focus on news videos.
The transition from viral video content — such as BuzzFeed’s wildly popular Tasty clips on Facebook as well as its bold-faced Try Guys franchise — to more hard news-based coverage echoes a similar transition that occurred within BuzzFeed’s written offering, according to NiemanLab. BuzzFeed began as a purveyor of listicles, for instance, before moving into investigative news.
Goldman, who will lead the new video efforts, previously oversaw unscripted content for BuzzFeed Motion Pictures — a separate video entity based in Los Angeles. He tells NiemanLab that his new team will be at the “center of a Venn diagram” between the BuzzFeed News and BuzzFeed Motion Pictures teams. BuzzFeed’s current video operations in New York are focused on non-news content as well as developing strategies for Facebook Live.
“I think we all know that the two-shot, where you have one person interviewing another person on camera, does not work,” Hilton told NiemanLab of his desire to develop new content formats. To this end, BuzzFeed began experimenting with some news-related videos last fall, when it started teaching certain reporters how to create 40-second clips to summarize their stories on Facebook.
All told, BuzzFeed publishes 65 videos every week, per NiemanLab, and has 7 billion views every month.
Ahead of the premiere of X-Men: Apocalypse this Friday, 20th Century Fox is making an enormous Snapchat push. The film will not only overtake all of the ephemeral platform’s lenses for 24 hours today, but fans will also be able to purchase tickets to the movie via Snapchat ads.
The move marks the first-ever sponsored lenses takeover, according to AdWeek, which notes that, rather than vomiting rainbows and puppy ears, Snapchatters will only be able to transform themselves into nine X-Men characters for the next 24 hours. The new crop of filters includes Beast, Professor X, Quicksilver, Apocalypse, Storm, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Mystique, and Magneto.
While other brands have sponsored lenses before (prices are rumored to range from $350,000 to $750,000 for a single filter, per AdWeek), such a move can result in massive viewership. A recent filter created by Taco Bell for Cinco de Mayo reportedly garnered 224 million views in one day.
Additionally, 20th Century Fox is tapping into Snapchat’s ecommerce ads for the forthcoming X-Men film. Users can swipe up on video ads inside Snapchat Discover ads that will offer the option to purchase tickets through Fandango and Movietickets.com. This isn’t the first time that the company has experimented with ecommerce options. Last month, Lancôme and Target both ran shoppable ads within Cosmopolitan’s Discover channel.
The Snapchat campaign represents the latest component of the film’s digital push. In March, alongside app maker Victorious, the franchise premiered an X-Men Movies App for superfans featuring exclusive content, giveaways, and other interactive features.
BuzzFeed exploding watermelons is so last month. The new most-watched Facebook Live video of all time is not the product of an entertainment and news brand with an ingenious content production and distribution strategy, but rather comes from a proud wife, stay-at-home mother-of-two, and denizen of Grand Prairie, Texas who’s in possession of no prior internet cred and no other production and distribution mechanisms than a phone, an internet connection, and a Facebook account.
Candace Payne broadcast “It’s the simple joys in life…” on May 19, 2016 from inside her car for four minutes and two seconds to what she thought was her regular Facebook social circle. Payne used the social networks’ live streaming feature and was was explicit with her excitement over the gift she just bought from Kohl’s for her son. It’s an electronic Chewbacca mask that kinda looks like a very well-designed Snapchat (or Facebook?) filter. It bellows in Wookie every time the wearer opens his or her mouth. And, by all accounts, it’s awesome. That’s evidenced by the fact Payne can’t help but smile when she’s talking about it and can’t help but laugh a laugh that’s right up there with the best laughs of all the internet when she wears it. Check it out:
Payne’s display of of genuine, infectious, dance-like-nobody’s-watching excitement quickly spread beyond her Facebook friends. In four days the video’s amassed over 136 million views and 3.1 million shares. It’s also gotten Payne and her family a sick spread of toys from Kohl’s, an appearance on Good Morning America replete with more gifts from Hasbro (the company behind the Chewbacca mask), and a lot of positive vibes as she’s been able to bring a little bit of joy into the lives of individuals from all around the world.
Payne’s surely been able to bring some joy to the powers that be at Facebook, too. As the established social media network looks to become a major player in the online video space, the prevalence of wide-ranging success stories – from BuzzFeed’s watermelon hijinks to Chewbacca Mom – will certainly help in showing other brands, celebrities, and regular old users the power, potential, and ease of use of Facebook’s video features. Expect a lot more items in your news feed to feature viral phenomena that got their start on Facebook in the very near future.
Zoe Sugg has unveiled a new collection within her enormously successful two-year-old bath and body brand, Zoella Beauty, which she creates alongside British manufacturer SLG. Dubbed Sweet Inspirations, the latest collection — which has been in the works for over a year, Sugg says — is inspired by macarons and sweet almonds.
The collection represents Zoella Beauty’s third since its founding, and will comprise a body mist, body cream, bath and shower milk, a fragranced bath fizzer, bath salts, a shimmer balm, and several cosmetics pouches, ranging in price from roughly $7.00 to $17.00. Packaging takes its design inspirations from the 1920s and French pastry shops, according to Sugg. The collection debuts this Friday at UK retailers Feel Unique and Superdrug.
At the same time, Zoella Beauty has announced an international push. The products are now available in Spain, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates, and are slated to debut “soon” in the United States at Tilly’s as well as Aerie, an intimate apparel sub-brand of American Eagle.
Sugg announced her original bath and body collection in 2014, which she followed up with a Tutti Fruty range in 2015, as well as several limited edition Christmas products over the holidays. “I can’t even tell you what it feels like to own a beauty brand,” Sugg said in a video unveiling the latest launches. “It’s one of those things that I work on that I wake up every day and I’m excited to do.”
The collection arrives on the heels of some rather sobering news for the wildly popular vlogger, who counts roughly 15 million subscribers between her two YouTube channels. A 20-year-old predator who took advantage of nearly 30 young girls by posing as Sugg online has been sentenced to eight years in jail. “This is why you must be SO careful who you speak to online,” Sugg recently tweeted in response to the news. “Please be safe guys.”
Alongside additional programming in popular video categories like beauty and gaming, this year’s VidCon event is slated to showcase more content than ever before from Hollywood film studios.
For the first time, exhibitors will include 20th Century Fox, Netflix, and Warner Bros., according to a report in The New York Times, while returning participants include Universal Pictures, Lionsgate, and DreamWorks Animation. Warner Bros. is “planning an elaborate stunt” for Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, a prequel to Harry Potter — whose fandom heavily intersects with the YouTube community. It will also promote Lights Out, a thriller that started out as a YouTube short.
Additionally, Universal will screen The Secret Life of Pets and DreamWorks will promote Trolls, which features the voices of prominent YouTubersKandee Johnson, Ricky Dillon, GloZell Green, and Meg DeAngelis.
And it’s not only studios that will be storming VidCon, reports the Times, which likens VidCon to “a younger version of Comic-Con International.” Joining the plethora of digital stars in attendance will be Hollywood celebrities like Emma Roberts, who is set to promote her upcoming Lionsgate thriller Nerve.
“Even if I wanted to fight against it, it would be like bailing out the Titanic,” VidCon co-founder Hank Green told the Times. “The overlap is great, in part because it’s important for studios to understand video fans and creators, both the culture and the excitement. That will hopefully lead to fewer studio efforts in this area that are inauthentic and gross.”
Though Hollywood is slated to be out at VidCon in full force this year, many players in traditional entertainment have had a presence at VidCon – which is expected to host 30,000 guests from June 23-25 — for years. For instance, television networks like Nickelodeon, NBC, and HGTV were early adopters, per the Times, and DreamWorks’ Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg delivered the event’s keynote address in 2014.
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by OpenSlate. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.]
Scroll down for this week’s Tubefilter Chart.
It’s another installment of the weeklyTubefilter Chartof theTop 50 Most Viewed U.S. YouTube Channelsand a preadolescent is still in the top spot.
Chart Toppers
Ryan ToysReview is in first-place for the fifth week in a row. The home video collection of six-year-old Ryan playing with his favorite toys was down 5% on the week, but still amassed over 148 million views. In a still very distant second place is WWE. World Wrestling Entertainment’s YouTube destination saw a 4% dip in views to slam down more than 108.4 million views in the week.
In a close third place is FamilyFunPack. The internet’s favorite American septet’s library of family footage was was down 3% to end the week with nearly 106.5 million views. Up next in the #4 spot is Justin Bieber. The 22-year-old international pop star’s music video catalog took a 6% hit in views to close out the week with more than 98.2 million views.
And rounding out the Top 5 is BuzzFeed Video. The flagship YouTube channel of the emergent media brand known for listicles, quizzes, and hard news was up 6% and scored more than 73.5 million views during the week.
Top Gainers
The honor of one of our Top Gainers in the U.S. this week goes to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
NBC’s premiere late night talk show always has a great week on YouTube, but this week was better than post thanks to a Game of Thrones tidbit from Jon Snow himself. Kit Harrington revealed to host Jimmy Fallon how, in order to avoid a speeding ticket, he told an officer of the law the fate of the seemingly dead GoT character way before it was revealed on screen. The clip (along with another clip featuring a Meghan Trainor slip up) helped The Tonight Show‘s YouTube channel to to a 43% week-over-week increase in views, nearly 49.7 million views, and the #20 spot on the U.S. chart.
Channel Distribution
The top 50 most viewed U.S. YouTube channels this week amassed a total of 2,500,139,776 views. Here’s the distribution of a few of those channels by multi-channel network:
VEVO: 16 channels in the U.S. Top 50, with Justin Bieber the highest-ranked channel of the network at #4.
Maker Studios: 4 channels in the Top 50, with Markiplier at #21.
BuzzFeed, Movieclips: 2 channels each in the Top 50, with BuzzFeed’s BuzzFeed Videos at #5 and Movieclips’ Movieclips Trailers at #19.
OpenSlate is a video content analytics platform that tracks more than 800,000 YouTube video channels and measures their ability to attract, engage and influence an audience. By providing one consistent measure of quality – the SlateScore™ – OpenSlate helps marketers, producers and agencies hone their online video marketing strategy.
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a weekly rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by OpenSlate. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.]
Scroll down for this week’s Tubefilter Chart.
It’s another installment of the weekly Tubefilter Chart of the Top 50 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide and Europe came together to crown a temporary chart topper.
Chart Toppers
Ryan ToysReview couldn’t hold onto the first place position for a fifth week in a row, but it was for good reason. While the channel featuring six-year-old Ryan and his home video playtime footage racked up more than 148 million views on the week, it wasn’t enough to beat out Europe. The annual Eurovision Song Contest claimed the #1 spot on the chart amassing nearly 174 million views during the week.
In a close-ish third place is T-Series. The YouTube channel that’s home to the self-described #1 Indian music label ended the week with more than 132.5 million views. Up next in the #4 spot is netd müzik. The music publisher under the banner of the Turkish conglomerate Doğan TV Holding received over 119.2 million views in the week.
And rounding out the Top 5 is Webs & Tiaras – Toy Monster Compilations. The crazy popular channel composed of videos showcasing adults in every day and superhero-y situations while wearing superhero costumes closed out the week with more than 116 million views.
Top Gainers
The honor of one of our Top Gainers this week goes to Eurovision Song Contest.
The annual international TV song competition that saw 42 countries compete in 2016 for its 61st edition just concluded this past week. And a lot of people watched clips from the contest and the results on YouTube. Thanks to its potential appeal to somewhere close to one billion denizens of the Earth, the Eurovision Song Contest’s channel witnessed a 475% week-over-week increase in views, almost 174 million views in the week, and the #1 spot on the worldwide chart.
All in all, the top 50 most viewed YouTube channels accounted for 3,551,821,899 views last week. Here’s the distribution of a few of those channels by multi-channel network:
Vevo: 9 channels in the Top 50, with Justin Bieber at #8.
Maker Studios, Studio71: 3 channels each in the Top 50, with Maker Studios’ TheDiamondMinecart at #11 and Studio71’s Webs & Tiaras – Toy Monster Compilations at #5.
BuzzFeed, XMediaDigital: 2 channels each in the Top 50, with BuzzFeed’s BuzzFeed Video at #15 and XMediaDigital’s mashamedvedtv at #14.
And here’s the distribution of the this week’s Top 50 YouTube channels by country of origin:
United States: 23 channels in the Top 50.
Canada, Great Britain: 5 channels each in the Top 50.
India: 4 channels in the Top 50.
Russia: 2 channels in the Top 50.
Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, El Salvador, Ireland, Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine: 1 channel each in the Top 50.
OpenSlate is a video content analytics platform that tracks more than 800,000 YouTube video channels and measures their ability to attract, engage and influence an audience. By providing one consistent measure of quality – the SlateScore™ – OpenSlate helps marketers, producers and agencies hone their online video marketing strategy.
We receive a ton of tips every day from independent creators, unaffiliated with any major motion picture studios, television networks, new media studios, or other well-funded online video entities. The Indie Spotlight is where we’ll write about and shout out to a select few of them and bring you up to speed on the great (and sometimes not-so-great) attention-grabbing series you probably haven’t heard about until now. Read previous installments here.
As laws like North Carolina’s HB2 — which bans trans citizens from using public restrooms that correspond with their gender identity — are spawning heated debates across the country, a new web series aims to dismantle anxieties related to such legislation through humor and relatability.
The brainchild of comic Dylan Marron, Sitting In Bathrooms With Trans People is an interview series for Seriously.TV — a millennial-leaning channel created jointly by Verizon and Hearst. In each episode, Marron will interview a different transgender guest — the first being Jackson Bird (below). In addition to talking to Bird about his transgender journey, the two also eat waffles, chug beers, and play ribbon dancer with some toiler paper over the course of the roughly four-minute episode, which now counts almost 90,000 views on Facebook.
“What I wanted to do here was completely humanize the issue,” Marron told MSNBC of the series. “To have an honest, human, warm, emotional conversation with a trans person in the bathroom is just basically saying, ‘Hey viewer, this is something I want you to open your heart to.’”
OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT
All My Friends Are Married. A quirky comedy that highlights the joys and pitfalls of being single and living in New York City.
Chronicles of Humanity. This animated sci-fi show set in 2340 follows a young woman on a quest to uncover a government conspiracy.
Emergency Contacts. Two mismatched roommates — a cheery extrovert and a quiet homebody — are attempting to navigate life in New York City.
The Grey Matter. Two teenage girls must overcome their differences in order to free a mutual friend from the grasp of a supernatural being.
Got a series you’d like to see featured in the Indie Spotlight? Be sure to contact us here. For best coverage, please include a full episode in your e-mail.
Ellen DeGeneres, who affirmed her digital prowess when she inked a development deal with YouTube star Tyler Oakley earlier this month and curated a playlist of her favorite viral videos for the YouTube Kids app, has just ticked off another buzzy box: her very first 360-degree video.
The clip, which is available on YouTube and Facebook, has clocked roughly one million views since its debut on Tuesday. “I don’t know how it works — I think it’s the work of the devil — but it’s really impressive,” DeGeneres joked of the technology.
Sponsored by Liberty Mutual, the clips features five stories happening simultaneously as DeGeneres invites some of her favorite guests back to the show to thank them for a successful season, including Brielle from She’s Brielle-iant, Nick the Gardener, Noah Ritter (the “apparently” kid), Andy Zenor, and Robby Johnson.
