2013 YouTube Study Introduction and Credits How long should my videos be? How often should I upload? How many words should I put in the video description to optimize for search? These and many more questions are asked by online media creators and brands every day. In the Spring of 2013 a group of un- dergraduate students in the Internet and Mobile Media Concentration at Columbia College in Chicago (colum.edu/tv) explored best practices in using the YouTube platform by study- ing the approaches taken by its most successful users. The study focused on analyzing YouTube channels that succeeded in growing largest recurring audiences (most sub- scribed). If you aspire to build a popular YouTube channel for your internet show or build a brand presence on this platform, I hope you find this document to be a useful guide. All data is available in a format of multiple Google spreadsheets and can be accessed here: http://goo.gl/oYVrO I’d like to thank the following students who worked hard collecting data, analyzing it, and writing summaries which allowed for this document to exist. Chanel Armstrong (@nelly_latrice), Courtney Aubrecht (@caubrecht913), Gabriel Gitlevich (@1charmedboy), Quinton Hampton, Melinda Heaney, Adan Hernandez (@ajhrndz1021), Danielle Lucovich, Leland Tellefsen (@mlproductionz) Wojciech Lorenc Assistant Professor Television Department Columbia College Chicago [email protected] @lumarange i Table of Contents 1.!Overview of YouTube’s Most Popular Content..............................!3" ! Summary by Gabriel Gitlevich 2.!Programming and Format Choices of " !The Top 100 Independent YouTube Channels...............................!12" ! Summary by Leland Tellefsen 3. Intros, Credits, Pacing of" The Top 100 Independent YouTube Channels.................................!22" Summary by Adan Hernandez 4. Analysis of Video Engagement of" The Top 100 Independent YouTube Channel...................................!25" Summary by Melinda Heaney 5. Analysis of Web Presence of" The Top 100 Independent YouTube Channels.................................!31" Summary by Courtney Aubrecht 6. Charts..................................................................................................!57 ii 1 summary by: Overview of YouTube’s Gabriel Gitlevich Most Popular Content Methodology Methodology of this study required all students to go to vidstatsx.com and look at the top 241 most subscribed channels. The reason for this was that we wanted to look at the best practices of channels that managed to build significant repeat audiences and not just chan- nels that happened to have uploaded a viral hit. At this point, the channels were divided up to all the students by the teacher and given specific questions to answer pertaining to each channel, subsequently then added to specific google docs charts. Completion of this section was done week 1 of the spring 2013 semester. The goal is to gain an understand- ing of YouTube’s overall most popular content. A link to the table of total data is provided. All information for this part of the study can be located in TABLE C. All data can be accessed here: http://goo.gl/oYVrO Languages It has been determined that the top 241 channels varied in languages from all around the world. When calculating the percentage of each language per channel, the total break- down of languages is as follows: English, 205 Channels, 85% of the top 241 channels. Spanish, 12 Channels, 5% of the top 241 channels. Korean, 5 Channels, 5% of the top 241 channels. Portuguese, 4 Channels, 1% of the top 241 channels. German, 3 Channels, 1% of the top 241 channels. French, 2 Channels, Less than 1% of the top 241 channels. Hindi, 2 Channel, Less than 1% of the top 241 channels. Russian, 2 Channels, Less than 1% of the top 241 channels. 4 Japanese/Chinese, 1 Channel, Less than 1% of the top 241 channels. Middle Eastern, 1 Channel, Less than 1% of the top 241 channels. Varies, 1 Channel, Less than 1% of the top 241 channels. Serialized VS. Episodic Content Moving forward with our study, we then divided up all the channels by specific genres and attributes. Specifically, serialized content, which is material that flows from one video to the next, and episodic content, which is material that does not continue from video to video. When determining how much content was serialized vs. episodic, we found that out of the 241 initially studied channels, only 1 appears to include serialized content. The only example of a channel in our study of the top 241 channels that appears to have predomi- nantly serialized content is Channel MachinimaPrime. Out of the 241 initially studied chan- nels, 240 appear to be episodic (non-serialized) content. VEVO channels are the most com- mon example of channels with predominantly non-serialized content in our study of the top 241 channels. Genres Firstly, we broke down channels into their respective genres beginning with music. We sub- sequently found that out of the 241 initially studied channels, 79 appear to fall in the music genre which comes out to about 33%. The second genre of channels looked at were the comedy genre. There we found that out of the 241 initially studied channels, 83 appear to fall in the comedy genre which comes out to about 34%. The third genre of focus was gaming channels. There we found that out of the 241 initially studied channels, 36 appear to fall in the gaming genre which comes out to about 15%. The final major genre of focus was fashion/beauty. There we found that out of the 241 initially studied channels, 14 ap- pear to fall in the fashion/beauty genre which comes out to about 6%. Examples of other genres that are present in our study are as follows: Short Films, Auto-Tune, Animated Mu- sic Videos, Drama Shorts, Educational, Art Demonstration, News, Sports, Exercise, Sci- ence, Commentary, Nature etc... 5 Independent Content VS. Extension of Large Brands Secondly, we determined channels that appear to have independent content vs. content that is an extension of large brands. Independent content is produced by you, me, or any- one who has a camera on their computer that can upload videos to YouTube. Content that is an extension of large brands is anything that is produced by a major network or brand. There we discovered that out of the 241 initially studied channels, 165 appear to be pro- duced independently which comes out to about 68%. On the flip side, we found that out of the 241 initially studied channels, 78 appear to be extensions of large brands or tv shows which comes out to about 32%. Thirdly, we broke it down even further into independent content vs. content that is an ex- tension of large brands with respect to the specific genres we looked at earlier. There we discovered that 30 of all the music channels in the initial 241 studied channels appear to be independent which comes out to about 37%. Examples of music channels from the 241 that appear to be independent are as follows: TylerWardMusic, megannicolesite, WongFuProductions, davedays, zeldaxlove64, MeganandLiz, meekakitty, VenetianPrin- cess, descealetra, gootmusic, David Choi, karmincovers, walkofftheearth, KurtHugoSchnei- der, kidrauhl, nicepeter etc...Out of all the music channels in the initial top 241 studied channels, 50 appear to be of large labels or famous artists which comes out to about 63%. Examples of YouTube channels from the top 241 that are music channels created by large music labels or famous artists are as follows: EminemVEVO, BritneySpearsVEVO, ColdplayVEVO, JustinBieberVEVO, OneDirectionVEVO, RihannaVEVO, KatyPerryVEVO, TaylorSwiftVEVO, AdeleVEVO, AvrilLavigneVEVO, TheXFactorUSA, SelenaGomezVEVO, ShakiraVEVO, BlackEyedPeasVEVO, PINKVevo etc... Out of all the comedy channels in the initial top 241 studied, 75 appear to be independent which comes out to about 90%. Examples of comedy channels from the top 241 that ap- pear to be independent are as follows: elrubiusOMG, SteveKardynal, WHATTHEBUCK- SHOW, danisnotonfire, JacksGap, JLovesMac1, RhettandLink, NormanFaitDesVideos, To- byTurner, theDOMINICshow, TomSka, CaELike, MonsieurDream, shane, Felipe Neto etc... Out of all the comedy channels in the initial top 241 studied, 7 appear to be extensions of larger brands or tv shows which comes out to about 10%. Examples of YouTube channels 6 from the top 241 that are comedy channels that appear to be extensions of larger brands or tv shows are as follows: collegehumor, machinima, TheEllenShow, JustForLaughsTV, ho- tandfluffycomedy, JimmyKimmelLive, MachinimaPrime. Out of all the gaming channels in the initial top 241 studied, 28 appear to be independent which comes out to about 80%. Examples of gaming channels from the top 241 that ap- pear to be independent productions are as follows: BlueXephos, ThesyndicateProject, WhiteBoy7thst, SeaNanners, UberHaxorNova, SmoshGames etc... Out of all the gaming channels in the initial top 241 studied, 7 appear to be extensions of larger brands which comes out to about 20%. Examples of YouTube channels from the top 241 that are gaming channels that appear to be extensions of larger brands are as follows: ChimneySwift11, MachinimaRealm, RandonsPlays, CALLOFDUTY, machinima etc... Out of all the fashion/beauty channels in the initial top 241, 14 appear to be independent which comes out to a full 100%. Examples of fashion/beauty channels from the top 241 that appear to be independent productions are as follows: MichellePhan, bubzbeauty, la- dy16makeup, juicystar07, cutepolish, AllThatGlitters21, missglamorazzi, Macbarbie07, ijus- tine, AndreasChoice, kandeejohnson, dope2111, JLovesMac1, DulceCandy87. Out of all the fashion/beauty channels in the initial top 241, 0 appear to be extensions of larger brands or tv shows which is equal to 0%. Given that 0% of fashion/beauty channels appear to be extensions of larger brands, there are no examples for fashion/beauty chan- nels that are extensions of larger brands in this study. Subscribers Finally, nearing the end of this part of the study, we determined the Mean, Median, and Mode of the total number of subscribers that appear on each channel. The Median num- ber, described as the number at the center of the total, chronological list of numbers, of subscribers in the top 241 channels is 1229875 or about 1.23 M.