To help figure out what’s driving viewership in the online video ecosystem, we’ve partnered with social video analytics company Tubular Labs to surface insights every quarter. Below, general platform trends for YouTube and Facebook for Q2 2018 in executive-summary form. (Note: These insights draw from Tubular’s in-depth quarterly report; to obtain the full State of Online Video study, clickhere.)
One major trend: the ongoing verticalization of social video on both Facebook and Twitter, with publishers experimenting with a portfolio approach to audience-building by launching a number of related brand channels focused on specific genres.
Sports, family & parenting, food and music were among the highest growing social video verticals by views, and it’s worth noting that the growth here is largely driven by a surge of views from international creators. Specifically:
- There was 20x growth in sports media views from top global creators.
- There were over 4 billion global views of K-pop music videos in Q2.
- Spanish sporting leagues and Spanish family & parenting brands doubled views in the quarter.
- Mexican media brands across media and food verticals grew an average 50% across the board.
- Creators based in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and South Korea saw an increase in views across genres.
The major takeaway: Creative strategists would be wise to look outside their geographical and genre boundaries to uncover strategies, decipher success stories and learn from mistakes that haven’t reached your market or genre yet.
Facebook Trends
Q2 saw big growth in several verticals, with food & drink leading the way. This genre has clearly proved to be more than just a trend — it generated more Facebook video views than beauty, science & tech, gaming, fashion & style and education combined. Science & tech also stood out with 248 million views gained in Q2 despite a drop in videos uploaded.
In addition, local news saw 9.5% growth, while uplifting news stories had an average of 18.1 million for 30-day views.
Another interesting trend on Facebook is the growing popularity of long-form videos in the news & politics genre. There was a 22% growth in viewership of videos over 20 minutes long, higher than the 14% growth in videos 12-20 mins long and the 5% growth in videos 10-15 mins long.
Another trend: Viewers are increasingly using Facebook to tune into live geo-political events and long-form sports content.
Speaking of global, Spanish, LATAM (Latin America) and APAC (Asia-Pacific) creators are driving growth in sports media (+2% views), family & parenting brands (+31% views) and Influencers (+8% views) on Facebook.
YouTube Trends
International creators were key growth-drivers for YouTube, particularly with sports media (18% growth in views), food (+26%) and music & dance (+7%) genres. And despite flat growth in new videos coming online, home & DIY was a booming vertical with 38% growth in views.
The category has been dominated by the creator 5-Minute Crafts, which produces and publishes long-form listicle videos about crafts and hacks that use everyday household items. It’s the fourth most-viewed creator across platforms and the 10th most-viewed YouTube creator. 5-Minute Crafts owned 61% of the share of Q2 views generated by media publishers in the category, and 50% of its views came from “DIY hack”-themed videos.
