Multiple reports have surfaced recently stating that top Vine stars are defecting from the micro video platform in favor of competing services like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat — in search of larger audiences as well as more substantial monetization opportunities.
In addition to top creators, brands have also been looking to create sponsored Vines less frequently (the company does not currently have an advertising model in place) over the past six months, Joe Gagliese, CEO of Viral Nation — an influencer talent and marketing agency — told Digiday. Gagliese has been pushing his clients to post on Facebook, he says, where analytics are better, the team is constantly innovating new video features, and monetization seems imminent.
Research by influencer marketing company Markerly determined that roughly half of 9,725 Vine stars with more than 15,000 followers — including prominent creators like Zach King — have left the platform since the beginning of this year, according to Digiday. Another study by marketing tech company Amobee notes that user engagement on Vine has fallen by 12% over the last seven months.
The average number of loops (or views) on the top 10 Vine accounts are down 29% over roughly the last year, reports The Wall Street Journal, citing data from Tubular Labs. And while Vine counts 200 million monthly viewers and 1.5 billion loops every day, the Journal reports, the app has plummeted from being a top 50 app in the iTunes store a year ago to falling somewhere around 200th place in the rankings today.
The Journal also notes that discussions between top Viners and the platform’s owner, Twitter — in which creators were asking to be compensated for their work — have “largely stalled.”
Some users are happy with the platform, however, and reps from social marketing agency Niche, which is owned by Twitter, told the Journal that it has conducted hundreds of brand deals for its 31,000 creators so far this year. “We thrive on creators doing awesome things on Vine, Periscope, and Twitter,” Twitter spokesperson Will Stickney told the Journal. “It’s one of our top priorities this year to give those creators even better tools across all those products, including Vine, which continues to be a place where creative trends start and explode across the web.”
[Editor’s Note: Tubefilter Charts is a new 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 timeframe. You can check out all of our Tubefilter Charts – with new installments every week – right here.]
Scroll down for the Tubefilter Chart.
It’s another installment of the Top 100 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide and a new channel is in the top spot.
Chart Toppers
Justin Bieber finally let go of his #1 spot on the worldwide chart this month. The 22-year-old international pop star’s stint as the most-viewed YouTube channel was long-lived, but the music videos associated with his latest studio album Purpose could only help him keep the title for so long. The Biebs’ YouTube channel dipped 24% in views in April to bottom out in fifth place with more than 493.5 million views on the month.
Replacing Bieber at #1 is Ryan ToysReview. Six-year-old Ryan and his quickly growing library of home video-y playtime footage was down 5% in views, but still claimed first place with nearly 612.6 million views in the month. In a close-ish second place is WWE. World Wrestling Entertainment’s YouTube destination was down 2% to end the month just shy of 599.7 million views.
Up next in third place is T-Series. The YouTube channel of the self-identified top music label in India jumped up 12% in views to close out the 30 days of April with almost 565.7 million of them. And next up in the #4 spot is netd müzik. The music arm of Turkish media conglomerate Doğan Holding scored just about 504.6 million views in the month.
Top Gainers
The honor of one of our our Top Gainers this month goes to Meghan Trainor.
In a short 30-day month without any major viral hits, Meghan Trainor’s YouTube destination is one of our top gainers on the chart. The 22-year-old’s online video library was home to the pop star’s first single in the past seven months. “No” was released on March 21, 2016 and over the course of the following month racked up an impressive nine-figure view count, single-handedly helping Trainor’s channel to a 63% month-over-month increase in views, nearly 194.7 million views, and the #48 spot on the chart.
Channel Distribution
The Top 100 Most Viewed YouTube channels this month amassed in aggregate a total of 22,199,764,987 views. Here’s a look at the distribution of those channels broken down by the most-represented YouTube Multi-Channel Networks on the chart:
VEVO:17 channels in the Top 100. Justin Bieber is the network’s highest ranking channel at #5.
Maker Studios: 12 channels in the Top 100, with TheDiamondMinecart at #13.
Studio71: 4 channels in the Top 100, with FamilyFunPack at #6.
BroadbandTV: 3 channels in the Top 100, with Fernanfloo at #44.
AIR, BuzzFeed, Machinima, Movieclips, OhMyGenius, XMediaDigital: 2 channels each in the Top 100, with AIR’s Miss Katy at #38, BuzzFeed’s BuzzFeed Video at #9, Machinima’s JuegaGerman at #34, Movieclips’ Movieclips Trailers at #51, OhMyGenius’ Kids TV at #64, and XMediaDigital’s mashamedvedtv at #8.
And here’s a look into the distribution of the this month’s Top 100 by country of origin:
The United States: 48 channels in the Top 100.
Great Britain: 12 channels in the Top 100.
India: 6 channels in the Top 100.
Spain: 5 channels in the Top 100.
Canada: 4 channels in the Top 100.
Brazil, Thailand: 3 channels each in the Top 100.
Japan, Russia, Ukraine: 2 channels each in the Top 100.
Argentina, Chile, Denmark, El Salvador, Ireland, Jamaica, Nigeria, Netherlands, Philippines, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey: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.
Well, you can’t check it out now. Our Snapchat Stories from the AOL, YouTube, Fullscreen, and Vice NewFronts disappeared days ago, but we’ve compiled them for you in the video below. Give it a watch to see some behind-the-scenes of the look, feel, and food and beverage of these presentations and parties and follow Tubefilter on Snapchat to catch it all in real-time in the future.
In terms of content genres, gaming and music both dominate the YouTube landscape. ‘Minecraft’ was the top search query on all of YouTube in 2014, while music videos from bold-faced artists as well as fan-made covers are so pervasive that the company launched a standalone music app late last year.
However, a new trend that combines the two aforementioned interests is starting to gain serious traction, and it’s known as ‘gaming rap’. Searches for gaming rap videos have started to explode in recent months — climbing rather steadily since 2013 and peaking in February, according to Google Trends.
Additionally, there have been several videos within the category to have clocked millions of views. One of the most popular is a compilation of Five Nights At Freddy’s raps (below) by JT Machinima, a channel that makes songs and skits about video games. And these kinds of videos cross linguistic lines. The Spanish channel ZarcortGame, for instance, had a major hit with his music video about the first-person shooter game Rainbow Six Siege.
Other popular rap subjects include Undertale, Assassin’s Creed, and Halo 5, and top creators within the space count millions of subscribers apiece. ZarcortGame, for instance, has nearly 5 million subscribers, while fellow Spanish rapper Keybladecounts 2.5 million, and the self-described “British geek rapper and vlogger” Dan Bull has amassed more than 1 million subscribers.
“Gamers from all over the world have been creating new trends and formats on YouTube to celebrate their passion for gaming,” Jeff Rubin, the gaming culture and trends lead at YouTube, told VentureBeat. “It’s great to see video game rap emerge and develop on the platform.”
Video viewership may be exploding across Facebook — the social network says users watch 100 million hours of video every day — though it turns out a staggering majority of this watch time may be occurring in silence.
A report in Digiday surmises that 85% of Facebook video views today take place without the volume turned on. (Facebook videos autoplay silently within users news feeds, and the company counts a view as just three seconds of watch time.) In its report, Digiday cites publishers like LittleThingsand Mic— each of which currently clocks 150 million monthly video views on the platform — as well as PopSugar, in noting that the majority of these views are happening silently. LittleThings and Mic both claimed that 85% of its views were silent, while PopSugar pegged its range at between 50% and 80%.
Accordingly, a new breed of video has proliferated across Facebook: text-heavy and visually arresting clips that grabs users’ attention within those ever-crucial first three seconds. This is true for both editorial and branded videos, according to Digiday, and branded videos also boast an 85% to 90% silent viewing rate, according to global media agency MEC North America. The agency said that the fact that users are watching native ads without sound, however, doesn’t necessarily seem to impact key metrics such as brand lift and intent to purchase.
That said, when marketers are creating a video campaign and servicing it to multiple platforms, YouTube tends to be a better buy than Facebook, Nick Pappas, the CEO of ad agency SwellShark told Digiday. This is because advertisers on YouTube can pay for completed views, whereas on Facebook, they can opt to be charged for either 3-second or 10-second views. “[Facebook] works sometimes, but it’s so important to have creative that meets the criteria of the platform,” Pappas told Digiday. “Otherwise, it can be a waste of money.”
At a time when digital platforms are making a serious play for sports-related content, Canadian multi-channel network BroadbandTV (BBTV) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) have announced the launch of a new video network called NBA Playmakers that will feature content created by millennial basketball enthusiasts. Videos will live on a YouTube channel to be launched later this year, as well as other platforms, including nbaplaymakers.tv.
BBTV and the NBA are tapping creators who have “passion” and a “unique voice,” according to a press release, and members of the network will gain access to NBA footage, games and special events, as well as NBA production facilities and new merchandise. The NBA Playmakers network will kick off during the NBA Finals next month, with a group of creators producing a digital version of the league’s ad campaign for the playoffs titled Every Second Counts, which features an original song by Timbaland.
“Sports is a passion-driven content vertical [and] a market with massive potential,” said BBTV founder and CEO Shahrzad Rafati in a statement. “We’re empowering creators to build the future of sports entertainment by partnering with one of the most renowned sports leagues in the world, and arming them with the content, tools and solutions they need to be successful.”
The NBA already operates a highly successful YouTube channel, which was launched in 2007 and now counts nearly 7 million subscribers and more than 3.4 billion views — which is the more than any other U.S. professional sports league, it says. Additionally, at YouTube’s Brandcast event during the NewFronts, the NBA announced it would be adding its clips to the Google Preferred advertising program, and launching two new virtual reality series on YouTube offering a behind-the-scenes look at top players and arenas.
BBTV, which says it has 15.1 billion monthly impressions across its network of roughly 75,000 channels — making it the largest multi-platform network in the world — has a relationship with the NBA that dates back to 2009, when it began to manage fan-uploaded NBA content onto video platforms including YouTube.
The site that’s home to innumerable listicles, millennial-inclined quizzes, and actual hard news (peppered with its fair share of investigative journalism) has produced fully-fledged social media and online video celebrities by way of its careful consideration of emotionally-engaging content. BuzzFeed Motion Pictures President, Ze Frank empowers a crafty team of multi-hyphenates (all of whom write, shoot, and edit their own videos) to create content made for niches, but that’s appealing to the masses. A few individuals and entities have emerged, attracting their own following beyond their close relationship with the BuzzFeed brand, but none are perhaps more popular than The Try Guys.
Eugene Lee Yang, Ned Fulmer, Keith Habersberger, and Zach Kornfeld are the quartet that is The Try Guys. The fast friends put themselves in curious and compromising situations and record the endeavor and the results to the delight of audiences, social critics, and brands. They were also among the stars on stage at BuzzFeed’s recent NewFronts presentation. It was the first advertising-oriented event of its scale that any of the guys had attended, so, we asked them if they could tell us a little bit about their experience. Yang, Fulmer, Habersberger, and Kornfeld then sat at an airport with their laptops, all entered into a Google Doc together, didn’t speak to one another, typed, and obliged.
Keith Habersberger: Welcome to “The Try Guys Try Writing An Article About Their First Time At Newfronts Together.”
Eugene Lee Yang: Very clean title, Keith. A+ journalism.
Ned Fulmer: We’re currently sitting in JFK airport, sharing a massive google doc and all chiming in simultaneously. It may get confusing.
KH: It’ll be fine.
Zach Kornfeld: It’ll be fine. Oh. We should probably start by talking about Miami, right?
NF: Leading up to NewFronts, we shot for a week in Miami, including three sponsored videos that culminated in us swimming in the ocean with sharks. We didn’t sleep before our flight to New York.
ELY: To clarify, the lack of sleep is attributed to the fact that, as multi-hyphenate producers at BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, we not only star in but write, direct, shoot, and edit our work.
ZK: In between shooting five videos in Florida, we were staying up late to edit new footage into our NewFronts sizzle reel, prep for our upcoming client meetings in NY, and work on our actual NewFronts presentation.
ELY: NewFronts was the perfect opportunity for us to continue to build up our business and sales experience.
NF: Since our flight was delayed, we had to take a cab straight from the airport to the NewFronts stage. Luckily, we strolled in right on time… to a room full of our BuzzFeed execs.
ZK: #SleepDeprived
KH: There was a huge BuzzFeed setup on the stage, dozens of chefs prepping to cook Tasty food the next day… and then Greg Coleman, President of BuzzFeed, cheekily reminded us “not to fu*k this up.”
NF: He was joking… we think.
ZK: Let’s jump to the morning of the presentation. We were all backstage, shrouded in a weird pink light. Keith mistakes a bowl of salad for a bowl of shredded beef.
KH: Looked like beef.
@QuintaB’s instagram photo of us all looking fancy AF and posing with BuzzFeed President Greg Coleman and BuzzFeed CMO & CCO Frank Cooper.
NF: We’ve performed for thousands of people before, but presenting to marketers, ad agency execs, and reporters was a different ball game. Nerves set in.
ELY: We ultimately decided the best thing we could do was be ourselves.
KH: Our entrance song was Celine Dion.
ELY: Everyone thought I was joking when I suggested “My Heart Will Go On,” but I legitimately know every word to every Celine Dion song.
ZK: It gets the people going.
NF: Many of the execs seemed confused at first, but I think we ultimately did a decent job.
ELY: Did we?
KH: There were several light chuckles during our presentation.
ZK: Once we showed our reel though… AWWW DAMN GIRL.
KH: Huh?
ELY: Zach.
NF: What Zach is trying to say is that our reel showcaseed our most viral work, organized by vertical, and was a compelling value proposition for brands to collaborate with The Try Guys.
ZK: Half a billion views! Synergy! CPMs!
KH: Getting back on track…
ELY: Our favorite tweet about our presentation was a review citing vomiting and proctology as our primary appeal to the “millennial” audience.
ELY: Regardless, it’s a fair observation of our brand: we’re very open about culture, identity, and yes, even the occasional failings of our own bodies, and I think that’s what’s always been our most attractive selling point. We’re not afraid to show people that we’re vulnerable and relatable, and above all, prepared to laugh at ourselves in order to get a more important point across or provide a more authentic form of entertainment.
KH: That reel, coupled with the sizzle we made for our new project “The Try Kids” got us a lot of attention.
NF: I think a lot of the audience may have seen a glimpse of their own kids in “The Try Kids.”
KH: Most kids are in a time of their life where they feel like they can do anything, so we figured, “why not have them try everything?” It’s a series that will inspire and entertain kids and parents alike.
ZK: We’ve already done 58 episodes of The Try Guys, so we’re in a really comfortable place making a new “Try” series with budding talent. Hopefully, “The Try Kids” is just the beginning.
NF: The rest of the week was spent in a blur of client meetings. It was great to be able to connect directly with advertisers, which included big brainstorms.
KH: It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for a while. We have great insight into what really works, so we’re excited to collaborate with brands to create sponsored content that aligns with both parties and still fucking kills it on the web.
ZK: AWWW DAMN GIRL.
KH: Zach, stop. We’re trying to be professionals.
ZK: Ok, fine. When we talk about being multi-hyphenates at Buzzfeed Motion Pictures, we often leave out the business component. NewFronts was an opportunity for us to get facetime with clients and plant the seeds for how we can work together in the future.
KH: We’ve done a handful of sponsored videos at this point, and have come to the conclusion that the closer our communication with the brand, the better the product for both parties.
NF: We have a mastery of the tools and processes that BuzzFeed Motion Pictures offers, and we excel at refining ideas to the point where they can make the most impact.
ZK: #MegaViral
ELY: In short, we’re excited by the opportunity to collaborate with brands in a more fresh, direct way as content creators who personally oversee projects from their conception to their release. We’re actively seeking to bridge the gap between the way traditional media and the online ecosystem operate and can’t wait to show the world the properties we’re developing, both as individual talents and collectively as The Try Guys.
ZK: Good job, everyone. We’ll edit out the dumb stuff, right?
UK-based YouTube channel Trollstationdescribes itself as “a collective of social misfits playing mad mind games on the public.” But today, the group’s antics — which include faking ebola outbreaks and suicide attempts — have landed four of its members behind bars.
The guys, ranging in age from 20 to 29, were each sentenced to several months in jail yesterday at the City of London Magistrate’s Court, according to the BBC, for a pranks in which they pretended to rob the National Portrait Gallery and stage a kidnapping at the Tate Britain. Trollstation member Danh Van Le was also separately sentenced to 24 weeks for his involvement in a bomb hoax.
All told, the channel counts more than 700,000 subscribers.
In the 10-month-old burglary video, which has 226,000 views, the guys cover their faces with women’s stockings, enter the National Portrait Gallery, and shriek, “Get the paintings!” as an alarm sounds (played over a portable speaker system that they brought into the museum) and frenzied patrons dash toward the exit. (They carried fake paintings into the museum inside trash bags, which they then pretended to steal.)
That same day, the team also attempted a similar heist on the Tate Britain, according to Metro, dragging fake paintings out of the museum as well as a woman (who was allegedly in on the joke) out in a headlock.
Once arrested, all four guys pleaded guilty to two counts of “using threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behavior with intent to cause fear of, or provoke unlawful violence,” the BBC reports.
District Judge Mike Snow, who sentenced the guys, said that “Their sense of humor is warped and immature. It was quite foreseeable that those attending the gallery not being in on the joke and being familiar with the recent scenes of people running for their lives from terrorist acts would be terrified.” Added prosecutor Robert Short, “We hope these convictions send a strong message that unlawful activities such as these will not be tolerated in London.”
In response to the jailings, other members of Trollstation have released a video in which they are at once remorseful and defensive of their colleagues, but, above all, promise that even more pranks are coming soon.
Within the next two weeks, Twitter is expected to announce that it will no longer count links or images toward its current 140-character limit. Right now, links take up 23 characters — though Twitter does automatically shorten all links — while adding photos (and videos) takes up 24 characters.
Twitter has reportedly been toying with changing its character limit for a while now in order to make the product easier to use, according to Bloomberg, which was first to report the rumored update. In January, for instance, the company was reportedly weighing expanding the limit on tweets to 10,000 characters — though co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey ultimately opted to stick with 140 characters. Twitter was founded to deploy 140-character messages in 2006 because that was the size of a standard text messages (before the proliferation of smartphones).
Right now, if users want to post a message that’s longer than 140 characters, they must either post a screenshot of text or deploy the statement in a series of tweets often referred to as a tweetstorm.
In other Twitter news, the company started to pilot today a ‘Go Live’ button within its Android app among a small number of users that enables them to fire up a live Periscope broadcast directly from inside of Twitter. The company told The Verge that it will be rolling out the feature to all users soon.
Following an expanded deal with the National Football League (NFL) that is bound to bring more football viewership to YouTube, the platform has now struck an agreement with Spain’s Liga Nacional de Futbol Profesional (LFP) — the country’s national professional soccer league — to broadcast a number of games for free on YouTube later this summer.
In addition to free live games from the LFP World Challenge, a pre-season tour, YouTube will offer highlights packages and behind-the-scenes footage, according to The Drum. Matches are slated to include the San Jose Earthquakes vs. Spain’s Real Sociedad, the Philadelphia Fury vs SD Eibar, and Bolivia’s Club Blooming v RCD Espanyol, among others.
In terms of video viewership, soccer can be a major boon for digital platforms. When Facebook released a list of the top 10 most-viewed 360-degree video clips of the year thus far, for instance, two of the clips featured professional soccer teams — one of which showcased FC Barcelona paying tribute to deceased coach Johan Cruyff.
The news comes just days after BT Sport, which holds the exclusive UK broadcast rights to two high-profile soccer tournaments — the Champions League and the Europa League — announced that it would broadcast the final games from each of the aforementioned tournaments live on YouTube. The games, which are put on by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) will take place later this month.
In addition to YouTube, other video companies have made major major plays for sports programming in recent months. Last month, Twitterwon the exclusive digital streaming rights for 10 of the NFL’s Thursday Night Football for the 2016 season, while Snapchat struck a deal with NBC that will enable it to show highlights from the 2016 Olympics on a dedicated Discover channel.
[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 an increasingly familiar channel is in the top spot.
Chart Toppers
Ryan ToysReview is in first-place for the fourth week in a row. Six-year-old Ryan’s home video collection featuring hours’ worth of his adorable playtime footage was up 2% in views to top out at almost 155.9 million views on the week. In a distant second place is WWE. World Wrestling Entertainment’s YouTube home jumped up one spot in the charts despite a 5% decrease in views to bottom out at more than 112.8 million views on the week.
In a kinda unfamiliar third place is FamilyFunPack. The family-friendly YouTube channel all about America’s favorite family of seven was down 8% to close out the week with almost 109.7 million views. Next up in the #4 spot is Justin Bieber. The 22-year-old international pop star’s online music video library stayed relatively constant with a 1% increase in views and more than 104.4 million views during the week.
And rounding out the Top 5 is still The Ellen Show. The YouTube channel of Ellen DeGeneres’ eponymous daytime talk show jumped up 63% in views on the week to top out at nearly 80.3 million views.
Top Gainers
The honor of one of our Top Gainers in the U.S. this week goes to Jennifer Lopez.
The 46-year-old pop culture icon made her first appearance on the chart in quite some time thanks to a hot new single. “Ain’t Your Mama” was released on May 6, 2016, and is already up to over 34 million views. Add those to the several million views Lopez usually gets from your music video library and that adds up to a 219% week-over-week increase in views, almost 31.7 million views on the week, and the #47 spot on the U.S. chart.
Channel Distribution
The top 50 most viewed U.S. YouTube channels this week amassed a total of 2,509,779,350 views. Here’s the distribution of a few of those channels by multi-channel network:
VEVO: 17 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 #19.
BuzzFeed, Movieclips: 2 channels each in the Top 50, with BuzzFeed’s BuzzFeed Videos at #8 and Movieclips’ Movieclips Trailers at #29.
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.
Facebook said today that it will begin selling video ads for “third-party apps and websites,” including on behalf of major publishers like the Daily Mail, Mashable, and USA Today. The social network has added a video advertising option to its so-called Facebook Audience Network — a mobile ad network that enables marketers to buy Facebook and Instagram ads outside the confines of the company’s own sites.
Facebook said that people watch 100 million hours of video on Facebook every day, and that total video watch time on Instagram has increased by 40% over the past six months. “Now,” the company wrote in a blog post announcing the new ad product, “in addition to watching these videos on Facebook and Instagram, people will view them on the other apps and sites where they spend their time.”
In coming weeks, marketers will be able to purchase both “in-stream” ads — or pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ads — as well as “in-article” ads — or clips that autoplay on silent within the text of a story — that harness Facebook’s extensive data and targeting capabilities. In-stream ads will be between 10 and 30 seconds, according to The Wall Street Journal, while in-article clips can be up to 20 minutes long. In-article ads will also be available on Facebook Instant Articles.
One of the first marketers to make use of the service is fast-food company Jack In The Box, according to Facebook’s blog.
Facebook already sells display ads on behalf of its Audience Network, for which it takes a 30% cut, according Journal — which is the same fee it is likely to receive for video ads. Facebook says its two-year-old Audience Network accounts for almost 6% of all time spent by U.S. web surfers on mobile. The number of publishers to join the network has grown by 620% over the past year, according to the Journal, and the division currently has an annual run-rate of $1 billion.
