Susan Boyle’s rapid rise to the heights of viral fame recently prompted renewed interest in the power of viral video. A list of the most watched viral videos of all time has now been compiled and it makes for very interesting reading.
Susan Boyle – Viral Phenomenon
A couple of weeks ago we looked at how Susan Boyle had gone from being a nobody to a worldwide star thanks to the power of viral video. The clip of her singing on Britain’s Got Talent was watched by so many people in such a short space of time that it was thought the Scottish virgin was headed for the top of the all-time viral video chart.
Thanks to Visible Measures, which tracks video views across sites such as YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Veoh, Yahoo, Hulu, and the sites specific to certain videos, we now know the truth. Susan Boyle is certainly up there but number one? Not a chance… yet.
Top Ten Of All Time
The top ten is listed below but Visible Measures has the top 18 charted due to that being how many videos have had enough virility to achieve over 100 million views.
1. Soulja Boy – Crank That
2. Twilight Movie Trailer
3. Mariah Carey – Touch My Body
4. Jeff Dunham – Achmed the Dead Terrorist
5. Susan Boyle (Britain’s Got Talent)
6. Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
7. Avril Lavigne – Girlfriend
8. Chris Brown – With You
9. The Dark Knight Movie Trailer
10. Alicia Keys – No One
Movie Trailers
Immediately it becomes clear what sort of clips attract the biggest interest – music videos and movie trailers. This isn’t very surprising because these are clearly the vids with most widespread appeal, but seeing the numbers laid out really should help media companies and video-sharing sites work out where they should be concentrating.
Movie trailers have most use in persuading to actually leave their homes for a night and go to see the film at the cinema. But the amount of views each has could also add a few dollars to the overall takings. Every little helps, especially in this recession-hit day-and-age. It should be noted however that many of the video views for movie trailers come from their own dedicated Web sites rather than an advertising-enabled site such as YouTube.
Music Videos
Music videos are more interesting. Of the top ten videos, six are music promos. These may have once been similar to movie trailers, made to persuade people to buy the record, but they are now clearly an important element of the business in their own right, especially as most of the views will come from YouTube and the like.
This makes the mess relating to music videos in recent months all the more bizarre. The record labels seem to have finally made peace with YouTube after a period of non-agreement. VEVO is going to see music videos promoted to unprecedented levels. But the PRS is still claiming YouTube owes it money even though its members are losing out due to the fact many music videos aren’t currently available in the UK.
Conclusions
The list shows there is still a place for user-generated content, with Jeff Dunham’s Achmed the Dead Terrorist top of the pile in that category. But it takes a huge idea with widespread appeal to enable UGC to get close to the popularity of music videos, movie trailers, and clips from hit TV shows.
As for Susan Boyle – her clips currently see her rated fifth of all time, not bad for a lady who only found fame three weeks ago. As the Britain’s Got Talent bandwagon rolls on towards the final, she’s sure to pick up many more millions of views. She needs to double her page views to beat Soulja Boy, and God, I hope she does.
It’s just a shame that due to a disagreement, neither YouTube or ITV (or Boyle herself) will make any money directly from the popularity of the videos.
