Friday, May 28, 2010

CHART OF THE DAY: The Half-Life Of A YouTube Video Is 6 Days (GOOG)

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-the-lifecycle-of-a-youtube-video-2010-5

A video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site, according to data from analytics firm TubeMogul. After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total views.

That's a really short life span for YouTube videos, and it's probably getting shorter. In 2008, it took 14 days for a video to get 50% of its views and 44 days to get 75% of its views.

Why? In the last two years, YouTube has improved its user interface, which helps videos get seen early on. Also, the world has gotten more adept at embedding and sharing videos in real-time via Twitter and Facebook. (And there's probably more video to choose from.)

What's this mean for publishers? For one thing, publishers should have advertising/monetization schemes ready to go for their videos right when they're published, because the hits come early.

It also means companies should be actively uploading videos to YouTube, says David Burch, a rep at TubeMogul. He notes that major companies like the NBA have been good at getting clips on YouTube quickly. If they didn't act fast, then they could miss an opportunity to get eyeballs.

chart of the day, youtube video lifecycle, may 2010

Follow the Chart Of The Day on Twitter: www.twitter.com/chartoftheday

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also: