The folks at NewTeeVee.com continue to crank out thought provoking coverage of the online video world. Chris Albrecht began a thread seeking to benchmark how many views constitues a "hit" online video. He interviewed numerours players and reports the following range in hit sizing:
- JibJab "This Land": 80 million views
- FunnyOrDie "The Landlord": 45 million views over 5 months
- Vuguru "Prom Queen": 15 million views in 3 months (what I've been told)
- KateModern (LonelyGirl spin off): 3 million in one month
- JibJab internal hit benchmark: 1.5 million views in week one
- Revver hit benchmark: 500,000 views
- FunnyOrDie "immortal" classification: 100,000 views
- Heavy.com hit benchmark: 100,000 views
The numbers are all over the map and are driven by external promotion and the length of time that the video has been released. Clearly the industry has a lot to learn about distributing online content — it is interesting to see MySpace and the other social networks turning into major video distributors. For now, Albrecht concludes that a hit piece of online video must have 100,000 views.
As the creative community rushes to embrace digital distribution of video storytelling, the potential scale of hit content is a critical factor. It ultimately shapes how much ad revenue these assets can produce which in turn impacts production budgets.