What Caused The Spike In Harper's Globe Views?
Harper's Globe recently received a large spike in views. The views were concentrated on the video "Harper's Globe - Ep. 1 - Fresh Start on Harper's Island" which received 87k views on one day alone and currently has a view count of 190k. What caused the spike?
We know that the video has a significant number of comments (2257 at present) many of which came from newly created youtube accounts but most of these were well before the spike and unlikely to have been the cause. The account statistics show that:
4,206 http://www.harpersglobe.com/
639 http://www.harpersglobe.com/episode/view/2/22/27/1
221http://www.harpersglobe.com/tlc_units/filter/2/257/1
70 http://www.harpersglobe.com/episode1
which means that 5316 views came from harpersglobe.com which currently has approximately 1000 registered users and therefore does not appear to be the source of the spike (we assume that the bulk of these views came from either non-registered site users or to some degree from multiple views by registered site users).
The "Harpersglobe" youtube account only has 789 subscribers so that is not likely to be the source of the spike. The video was embedded with autoplay in other lonelygirl15 accounts for a period of time but that did not correlate with the spike and in any case one might expect more of a "flat line" boost from such embeds. The most likely cause of the spike was the appearance of this video as a "Spotlight Video" on YouTube. If you have any information that can shed light on "the spike", leave a comment below and let us know.
Chart source: http://tubemogul.blogspot.com
Argentina
Australia
Belgium
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Egypt
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Hong Kong
Hungary
India
Indonesia
Iran
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Japan
Jamaica
Kuwait
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
Maldives
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Pakistan
Panama
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Republic of Korea
Russian Federation
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Slovenia
South Africa
Spain
Sudan
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Venezuela
Vietnam
Virgin Islands, U.S.
Posts
Are you implying that they may have gone the Chris Crocker route? (For those of you who don't remember CC was notorious for F5ing his videos thousands of times and commenting with at LEAST 2-3000 dummy accounts before Leave Britney Alone was so huge.)
ReplyDeleteIt's not just this video, the responses are getting mad views too, my first video has over 1000 views, I've never had anything with that many views, not even when I worked for LonelyJew.
ReplyDeleteJust a guess, but maybe a commercial for Harper's Island aired with a link to the HG website? That would explain the spike...
ReplyDeleteWe did not see any spike in views that correlated with commercials.
ReplyDeleteThe spike covered 3/25, 3/26 and 3/27 and was centered on 3/26.
ReplyDeleteThe spike was due to the video being listed at YouTube as a "Spotlight video."
ReplyDeleteYeah, I thought it was obvious that it got more viewers because Youtube featured it.
ReplyDeleteThe article does mention that the likely cause was the "spotlight video" but we are not quite sure how that process works, or what time it affects a video over. If anyone has a comprehensive analysis of that nature it would be useful.
ReplyDeleteI'll certainly try, modelmotion.
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to the YouTube blog entry announcing the addition of "Spotlight Videos" to YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=AD43znU32YE
It is dated March 25th. On that same day, the video in question was added to the list.
The video spent two days on the main page at YouTube as a result.
As new videos are added to the list, the older ones drop off the front page in much the same manner as posts here at the blogspot.
lol ... it's the lonelygirl people, you know they're cheating. Poor CBS is getting duped though, paying good money to a company that cheats 'em.
ReplyDeleteCheating would be stupid since the spike only highlights their in ability to retain and grow audience since views for subsequent videos fall off the cliff.
ReplyDeleteApotheosisAZ is absolutely correct. We were really fortunate to be featured on the homepage of YouTube. The editors at YouTube choose videos they like (it's totally subjective and I have no idea what process they use) and feature them on the homepage of the site which gets a HUGE amount of traffic... it's the homepage... of YouTube. We had something like 50k or 60k views (not sure) prior to being featured. We were on the homepage for a couple days, and then stayed in the "Featured" section afterwards. Naturally, this translated into a TON of views for Episode 1. We are SO EXCITED that YouTube likes the series and decided to feature it because the increased awareness will help drive even more viewers to the show! Thanks for all of your support for getting it the initial 50k+ views that got it on the radar of the YouTube editors in the first place. I hope you are enjoying the show and we appreciate your continued support!
ReplyDeleteM
The cumulative views on March 24 (prior to the spike) was 39, 175 views.
ReplyDeleteWe've discussed over on AnchorCove that youtube seems to update views late sometimes (can't remember precisely what was said, but a lot of people agreed that when views updated didn't necessarily correlate to when they were watched), and that could be the case here. It could have been a huge "catch-up" spike. Also, the Harper's Islands commercials during March Madness can't hurt at all. Yay for March Madness!
ReplyDeleteIf any implication of "cheating" is meant I think that's unfair. Between youtube updating late, the commercials, attention/press there are plenty of reasons that Harper's Globe might see a spike. It's not like they aren't promoting this and suddenly it has a ton of views. This is getting promotion like none other (CBS prime time commercials with a link to the site? Hello!) so I think spikes in views should be expected.
i agree with apo and others that the spike was caused by the new youtube "spotlight" feature.
ReplyDeleteits very true (as the post hints) that eqal staff commented very heavily on this video before it was "spotlighted." but that had a pretty negligible effect on views because youtube doesn't count multiple refreshes from the same IP address (like it did during the 'red army' days of redearth88).
if the eqalmeeping helped draw its attention to youtube, who knows? there are probably many reasons why youtube would be interested in featuring a tie-in to major network TV show that is using youtube for video distribution.
Personally I think it's sad if Youtube is picking up on this show. After watching the first episode it looks poorly developed. I have come across SO MANY INDIE shows on Youtube that really deserve the attention of the people. Giving attention to these guys really spotlights the huge gap in 'poor concept, poor quality, high connections', vs. 'Amazing concept, Amazing Quality, No connections'. I really hope Indies start taking off to offset this kind of nonsense of a show.
ReplyDeleteAmber
If we had wanted to suggest that there was cheating involved we would have asked the question of whether or not people thought Eqal Inc. was cheating...and we DID NOT. Anon seems to be the one who keeps bringing up the topic so if Anon has any evidence of cheating or an explanation of how to do it then they should speak up. Otherwise what we have in the article is a discussion of alternative explanations leading to the most probable explanation (the spotlight video).
ReplyDeleteIf anon is referring to the creation of "new accounts" then that is a verifiable fact but it has been long known that comments can have a positive effect on views and that is a strategy open to everyone and probably only affects views over the first few days and as stated in the article has little effect on the period covered by the spike in question.
Amber, if you run across a great indie show feel free to leave a link in a comment. We are always looking for great indie productions that people would enjoy watching. We might not be able to post every episode but we do like to post one early episode to let people know what is out there.
ReplyDeleteIf you prefer to post them yourself just send an email to [email protected] and we can add you to the author list.
VV, when you look for a statistical correlation you use the next youtube update following the real world event you are interested in. We all know that youtube updates periodically so that is the first assumption you have to make in doing the analysis.
ReplyDeleteThat's not quite what I meant (and I wasn't really accusing you of accusing them of cheating, just there seemed to be some mention of it and I wanted to put that to rest).
ReplyDeleteWe've discussed (I believe Virginian and Mary F were there) how that sometimes youtube updates view counts days, even weeks later, especially when they are linked. I also don't trust how youtube counts links. Youtube seems to be constantly changing its system (with some secrecy) so without more openess about the rules I think its hard to solve "mystery" like these.
The last needs to add a video reply, hopefully some of the views will follow.
ReplyDelete*takes a drink at SO EXCITED line*
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, guys...let's STOP trying to create drama every week.
Anon, this was a very important "spike" for us to fully understand. All video producer strive to understand the youtube metrics better so that they can best promote their own video series. To label a serious discussion "drama" is not exactly accurate. If anon wants to throw out words like "cheating" that is up to them but to date we have not seen any documented facts to support that contention.
ReplyDeleteModelmotion: My FAV Indie Series right now is Immortal Caesar: Life of a Pro Boxer. I've watched all 14 Episodes up so far and to me that has the highest quality content and best concept of anything on the Internet right now.
ReplyDeleteOther shows I have been checking out though are: With the Angels, it's a little corny, not very great production work, but it's still watchable and as a girl I can relate. And Thewestside.tv. A guy introduced me to it, it's been up a while, haven't been any new episodes of late. But it was kinda cool.
So there are my 3.
Amber