TubeMogul Research: Online Video's Short Shelf Life

• Posted by tubemogul
• on June 20th, 2008

For our latest online video research here at TubeMogul, we set out with a simple question: throughout the life of a video, do most views occur in the first few days and weeks or are they distributed randomly over time? To get the answer, we took a sample of about 10,000 videos and looked at a 90 day time period of when they typically get the most views. The data is clear: video viewership peaks early.

Based on these results we also developed a tool that any video creator can use to predict what their views will be at the end of a year, as well as what percentage of their total annual views have already lapsed. Pretty awesome.

What does all this mean? Howard’s erudite readers no doubt have insights, but here’s a stab: trends such as “evergreen” content always fetching views or videos randomly going viral are more of a rarity than an underlying trend in the data (although, in fairness to the “evergreen content,” the long tail above, while declining in potency as it approaches the x axis, would be significant if projected out a few years).

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