3 Million Views in 18 Hours: The Thrill of a Viral Video

Last month one of our videos "went viral."

It started with the comments on our YouTube channel.  Dozens every few minutes, some snarky, some trollish, some genuinely passionate, others asking questions or wanting more info.  At around the same time, the shares across YT, FB and Twitter started growing quickly.  Then the views started piling up at a startling pace - thousands per minute, three million in less than two days.

Within a few hours, old guard media outlets like CNN and ABC, along with the snappy upstarts like BuzzzFeed, were featuring the video, and before long there were very few people I spoke to that HADN'T seen "Great White Attacks Inflatable Boat."

YouTube was the basecamp for this heady ride, and was where most of the viewing occured. However, our website and FB page saw a significant lift in activity.  And, more importantly our niche wild animal brand, MaxAnimal, suddenly had thousands of new subscribers, and the attention of new business partners and advertisers. 

Just as shocking as the explosion in views, was how small the ad revenue YouTube delivered.  (I kid our friends at YouTube.)  But, it's impossible to build an online video business without YouTube, and the value their platform delivered to our brand could not be counted only in ad revenue.

Can we recreate the magic?  There is little science to media virality, but even an occasional home run like this can help us build our subscriber/fan base which makes us less dependent on the viral winds.  With the increased subscriber base, all our videos are adding a steady flow of new views every day, not the least being the Shark video which is now approaching 5 million views.

As a YouTube exec outlined during a recent talk, a fan base trumps an audience:

An Audience tunes in when their told to, a fan base chooses when and what to watch.

An Audience changes the channel when the show is over

A fanbase shares, comments, curates, creates

We are also bullish about the opportunity for niche channels to prosper in a new micro network world where subscribers are subscribing to the content they want to see.  As one of the backers of Maker Studios wrote on his blog recently:

I have been saying privately for years now that I believe online video will evolve into fragmented distribution and vertical production. By “vertical production” I meant that many online video production companies will have a strong vertical focus that will help them win the battle to sign up talent, build stronger & more loyal audiences and align with stronger advertiser relationships because they serve more endemic audiences

The End Of The Parties?

The NewFronts were a blast.  Some great parties, some great new content.  Exciting time to be in the digital video industry.

The head of the IAB was optimistic in the NY Times:

At the 2014 NewFronts, “we saw a new marketplace being born,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and chief executive of the bureau, likening this year on the digital video timeline to “1982 or 1983 in the cable industry,” when advertisers were beginning to embrace cable by spending significant sums to buy commercial time on CNN and the channel now known as TBS.

I had the good fortune to be in the cable network industry back then and the times do seem similar - from the buzz, the entrepreneurial spirit and the wild randomness of content ideas and associated talent.  However, there is one big thing missing - a monopolistic distribution platform (from the cable operators) that guaranteed shelf space and audience to the early entrants, regardless of how long it took to get the programming right. 

Today's ad supported programmers are dependent on fickle YouTube algorithms and a still emerging ecosystem of distribution platforms with any scale, beyond YouTube.

If there is anyone to be bullish on, its AOL.  Their party on a pier in the Brooklyn Navy Yard rivaled MTV's bashes in their glory years, and was attended by a who's who of advertisers, content creators and stars, all who are collaborating on dozens of new programs for AOL.

At the end of the day, the NewFronts were PR events.  Will the brands and their agencies who attended move dollars at the pace they did from broadcast to cable starting in the 80s?  Or does the whole idea of over 100 upfront sales bazaars contradict a fast approaching new world order, where the advertisers are themselves media companies, armed with more and more tools to communicate directly with their customers.

The most thought-provoking reaction to the NewFronts came from a media industry blog I read:

If I were a brand looking to truly connect, engage and build a direct relationship with my consumers, I would be less impressed with more video advertising inventory that can now be found online, and I would be spending the bulk of that time figuring out who is our Bethany Mota? Is it someone we build out from within, or is it someone we partner with for success?

Jimmy's Excellent YouTube Adventure

During Jimmy Fallon's first four weeks as The Tonight Show host he averaged roughly 5 million viewers per night.  During the same four week period, he racked up roughly 100 million views on the show's dedicated YouTube channel.  Some folks on his social media team have clearly attended a YouTube boot camp or two as they are following every golden rule for growing a YouTube audience, from a compelling welcome/subscribe video to catchy thumbs and titles, to sharable content.  And unlike the many MCNs that are gasping for life outside the YouTube monolith, The Tonight Show is using YouTube strictly as a marketing platform, even choosing to run the clips ad-free.

Based on the pace of the first four weeks, the Tonight Show YT Channel could add well over 1 billion views by the end of the year.  To put that in context, it has taken Machinima, YouTube's most popular channel, six years to reach 4 billion views.  And up until recently, YT has been their primary focus and source of revenue.

One could argue that NBC's parent, Comcast and YouTube are the 2 dominant televisual distribution platforms in the world, both getting stronger by the day -  YouTube through new generational viewing habits and  endorsements like this, and Comcast through extraordinary acquisitions like NBC and now TimeWarner Cable.

But it seems YouTube is the real winner in this story.  I for one am a huge Jimmy Fallon fan, but have never watched his previous show or the current one on television, opting to browse the best clips on YouTube throughout the week.  Same for my teen age kids and many of my friends in the 25-54 demo.

Danny Hillis, an inventor and technology entrepreneur was quoted in a recent NY Times Sunday Magazine cover story where he highlighted Marshall McLuhan’s observation that the content of a new medium is the old medium: that each new technology, when first introduced, recreates the familiar technology it will supersede.

Media Mogul Lessons from Ben Franklin

One of the many fascinating sections in Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin biography from a few years back describes our founding father as the country's first media mogul.  At one point in his extraordinary life he not only published the most popular newspaper in the colonies but was the country's first postmaster general, in essence, owning the content and controlling the distribution platform.

Media entreprenuers and executives of all stripes have been trying to recreate some form of this perfect business model ever since.  Comcast is the biggest player today with hands in both content creation and distribution.  I was part of the team that launched NY1 for Time Warner Cable in the early 90s.   The initial business pitch went something like: "Let's create a local news channel and put it on Channel 1 in all our NYC subsciber homes and promote the hell of out it in all our customer communication."  How could it not succeed?

The problem is.... companies tend to be good at one or the other, but rarely both.  The jury is still very much out on the NBC/Comcast merger.  NY1 is a tiny business within the Time Warner Cable monolith.   And more significantly, the most powerful media companies on the planet - Netflix, Amazon ,Google/YouTube, Facebook, Twitter - are distribution platforms.  Netflix and Amazon are certainly giving content creation a strong push, but it is still a tiny portion of their business.

But I am always fascinated by new attempts, regardless of the platform, demo or unscrupulousness of it.  

Here is some news on the latest,  from Disney, the "Dream Tab."

Thanksgiving TV Talk

The inevitable media/entertainment portion of Thanksgiving dinner conversation this year was less about the shows and more about the devices we use to watch them on/through. 

One cousin raved about his new $35 Chromecast, another still swears by his $99 Apple TV.  Yet another, a TV Luddite, was mocked for still accessing Netflix through his kid's Wii.  (A TV Luddite when I was growing up was someone who couldn't program the time on their VCR. )  

The parents in the room shared teen iPad overdose stories and some of the preteens mentioned they only watch video content on their phones, and only then when they're not playing mobile games.

Is it any wonder TW Cable is for sale?

We are in the midst of an epic free-for-all where all previous formats of programming and models of distribution and advertising will be challenged and in many cases, cast aside.

A.O Scott summed it up nicely in a story in last Sunday's NY Times.

Equally hard to refute is the idea that we are approaching a horizon of video convergence, in which all those screens will be equal and interchangeable and the distinctions between the stuff that’s shown on each one won’t seem as consequential as it does now. We still tend to take for granted that a cable drama, a network sitcom, a feature film, a web video and a first-person combat game are fundamentally different creatures, but they might really be diverse species within a single genus, their variations ultimately less important than what they have in common. They are all moving pictures, after all, and as our means of access to them proliferate and recombine, those old categories are likely to feel increasingly arbitrary and obsolete.

The Plugin Drug

Wow is it getting easier and easier to access the web on TV.  My $39 Google chromecast arrived last week in a slick little Apple-style box.  The size of a thumb drive, it plugs into the TV's HDMI port. Up pops a big screen inviting you to start "casting" video content from your smart phone, tablet or laptop.

A lot easier than Google's previous attempt at Internet TV, the Logitech console and keyboard circa 2012, shown here as I prepare to wrap it up and throw in into the bin of misfit toys

The chromecast has been getting a lot of press as it appears to be yet another important product that is going to help usher in the great TV disruption that still seems to be much more bark then bite.

But I will point to some more compelling research, highlighted in All Things Digital a few weeks back, that indicates, devices like Apple TV and now chromecast, are truly gateway drugs to chord cutting.

Broadband users with “connected TVs” — that is, anything from a “smart TV” to a TV with an Apple TV or Roku, or even a TV connected to a laptop with a cable — say they are twice as likely to cut the cord as broadband users who don’t connect their TV to the Internet.

 And you know what happens when drugs get really cheap!