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.