This week's chart takes a deep dive into YouTube data to compare recent daily views for five videos -- and the stats are totally scary not only for purveyors of pro content but for the bean counters at YouTube's parent company, Google. A few observations:
- "Star Wars According to a 3-Year-Old" -- you've seen that video already, right? Chances are, yeah, because it's been viewed more than 12 million times as of this writing, and it's been on YouTube since February 2008. You'd think it'd be more or less played out by now, but no! On Monday alone, for instance, 10,091 people watched it -- which isn't that much less than the total for the official trailer for the movie "Funny People," which had 15,910 views on Monday and is generally on a steep downward slope.
- Truly mind-boggling: An amateur wedding video, "Brian & Katie's Evolution of Wedding Dance," first posted on YouTube on Nov. 9, 2007, and closing in on 9 million views total, had a one-day peak so far this month (on Aug. 3) of 87,878 views -- leaving pro content such as the official trailers for "Funny People," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and "Twilight" in the dust. Now, keep in mind that Harry Potterheads and Twi-hard fans tend to disseminate various bootleg versions around the web, so surely these trailers are getting more views than the official-trailer tallies suggest, all told. But still!
- What's it all mean? Funny toddlers and dorky dancing couples in all their non-monetizable glory will live forever -- draining money (for server costs) from YouTube/Google's coffers until the end of time. Because people will never, ever tire of them. Ever!
- It's only going to get worse when Brian and Katie have kids and they start doing funny dance videos too, or when that 3-year-old "Star Wars" analyst grows up and has a 3-year-old of her own -- who will proceed to break the billion-views mark with her hilariously adorable deconstruction of, like, J.J. Abrams' remake of "Star Wars" (coming to a theater near you in 2028).
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Dumenco's Trendrr Chart of the Week is produced in collaboration with Wiredset, the New York digital agency behind Trendrr, a social- and digital-media tracking service. More background here. A basic Trendrr account is free; Trendrr Pro, which offers more robust tracking and reporting tools, comes in various paid flavors (get the details here).
Simon Dumenco is the "Media Guy" media columnist for Advertising Age. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.
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