TubeMogul recently released the results of a very interesting study for all online video creators out there. For those who haven't heard of TubeMogul yet, it stands as a hub to launch and track online videos on a multitude of video platforms like Youtube, Dailymotion, Revver, Blip.tv and so on. They are experts in video analytics and, while using their video platform is free, they also provide distribution and marketing consulting services for professional video creators.
The study released, namely Online Video's Short Shelf Life, scrutinized the life-span of a typical video online.
Methodology:The results show - as any video creator has already witnessed - that 50% of all views occur in the first two weeks, peaking at day three, which constitutes 11% of all views.
Our sample includes data for views by day for 10,916 videos over a 90 day time period. In order to exclude casual creators of online video (i.e. "Mikey's Birthday"), each video in the sample achieved a minimum of 1,000 cumulative views over the 90 day time period. A statistician fit a curve to the data and projected out views by day for a full year. All data is from videos deployed by TubeMogul.
This is no major outcome. As mentioned above, this is what any given video creator experiences with his content. Most video creators with a monetization intent tend to focus on providing volume instead of quality. Daily shows are increasingly common, and independent creators do not hesitate to launch 3 to 5 videos a day. Most of the time, creators are organized in teams to provide a maximum of videos on the same channel. Those creators are after video views, so any buzz that's on, they piggy-back on it.
In the end, blog monetization and video monetization obey the same rule: Not every video or article can be a traffic fountain. By submitting new content several times a day, bloggers and videobloggers get to be on top of the RSS readers' lists, on top of the recently released lists, and well-treated by search engines in general. All content creators know that. The Online Video's Short Shelf Life just made it scientifically proven for videos.
However, the most interesting parts of the study must have been on the exceptions that confirm the rule. Of course, those findings are not public, and one would have to contact TubeMogul's team to get the really juicy facts that can be squeezed out of this study.
I have a good unusual video trend I can share. It concerns the HyveUp video interview with Auctomatic Co-Founder Harjeet Taggar launched in January 2008. As you can see on the left of the chart, the first peak occurs in the first few days after the video is launched, just like what is described in the TubeMogul's study. However, the video really becomes popular two months later, precisely on the 26th of March, the day Auctomatic was acquired by Communicate.com.
This peak is mostly luck and opportunism. Auctomatic is a really small and discreet startup catering to a niche: eBay power sellers. When the news broke that it was acquired by an industry's leader (and for $5 million), a lot of people expressed the need to get more information about this surprising little startup. The video (in addition to being conveniently placed on the Auctomatic's Crunchbase profile) was one of the rare bit of info you could find about the company on the Web, and mostly about the people behind the company.
I have a similar example with Powerset. Powerset is a startup known for its buzz strategy: It positions itself as Google's direct competition, and hit a million drums every time they have an announcement to make. As you can see on the chart, the first peak happens right after the launch of the video. The second is when Techcrunch announced that Powerset was getting ready to launch. The last one is on Powerset's actual launch a month and a half later.
