Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance‘ is now the most watched YouTube video of all time, with 180 million views, overtaking the home video phenomenon “Charlie bit my finger.”
Last month Gaga became the first artist to break a billion views on Vevo/YouTube with the combined views of three hits -’Poker Face’, ‘Just Dance’ and ‘Bad Romance’.
Lady Gaga has become the first artist to break a billion views on Vevo/YouTube reports Mashable, the combined views of three hits -“Poker Face” (374,606,128), “Just Dance” (272,941,674) and “Bad Romance” (360,020,327).
Her latest release, “Telephone” a 9 minute epic co-starring Beyonce is already up to 23 million views on Vevo. I find it strangely compelling, not so much the music as the visual imagery – the police tape bikini is a bit special..
An ad made by Audi to promote its electronic car concept e-tron, which appears to send up Toyota’s accelerator problem, has become a YouTube sensation with 500K views.
Audi admits, in a report by Brandchannel, that they did make the viral called ”Toyota lawnmower recall’ but that it was released in September, before Toyota’s recall of some eight million vehicles worldwide.
The Toyota related title was allegedly added by an anonymous party more recently.
However, Audi does have a history of competitive advertising and recently took aim at BMW with ‘Friendly Competition‘ in which Audi capitalises on independent comparison road tests that found in their favour.
Our guess is the headline is the work of some online wag, part of a long tradition of advertisements being deliberately adapted or taking on a comic dimension in the light of new events – Tiger Woods print ads a recent example.
YouTube turned five on February 14th, which I guess is about the same age as Charlie’s brother, whose finger was bitten in the most popular YouTube video of of all time with 160 million views.
YouTube now streams over a billion videos a day and is visited by roughly half of the world’s internet users. In the UK, 16.9 million or 43% of the UK internet population visited the site last month representing a 150% growth in three years, according to UKOM.
Alex Burmaster of Nielsen predicts that in the next five years, the nature of YouTube’s content will change:
“The past five years has seen YouTube grow into the world’s consciousness based on its first-mover advantage around consumer-generated content. The next five years will see More »
The first episode of the latest series from HBO, the esteemed makers of shows including The Sopranos and The Wire, is premiering on YouTube prior to its network launch on Sunday.
‘How to Make It in America’, starring Bryan Greenberg (One Tree Hill), Eddie Kaye Thomas (American Pie) and rapper Kid Cudi, follows the escapades of two twenty-something New Yorkers trying to ‘Make It’ in the fashion business.
The YouTube marketing approach for HBO follows the success of ‘The United States of Tara’ which launched online last year, notching up more than 500,000 YouTube views on its first day.
YouTube is believed to be actively pursuing deals with programme makers while cable channels are seeing the potential for social media promotion of new releases via YouTube.
Sadly the pilot episode is blocked on UK YouTube so here’s the trailer instead:
Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced on Twitter on Saturday that ‘hell has indeed frozen over’ and that Google would run its first TV ad during the Super Bowl last night, called Parisian Love
“We didn’t set out to do a Super Bowl ad, or even a TV ad for search,” Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said in a blog posting yesterday. “Our goal was simply to create a series of short online videos about our products and our users, and how they interact. But we liked this video so much, and it’s had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that we decided to share it with a wider audience.”
Google’s decision is being seen as the latest move in their strategy to attract more commercial advertisers and programme makers from TV to YouTube.
Bridgestone has stolen a march on its Super Bowl advertising rivals with a viral teaser nearing one million views, putting it at number three in this week’s viral chart, behind Evian’s Roller Babies and Walmart’s Clown.
Though it was down to one million views this week, Evian’s viral has now clocked up 18 million views since it was released seven months ago, begging the question, if it costs $3 million for a 30 second Super Bowl ad slot reaching 100m TV viewers and $0 for a 60 second viral reaching 18m online, will more marketers do a Pepsi and abandon their Super Bowl slots in the future?
Two weeks after Toyota announced the recall of an estimated 8 million vehicles worldwide due to a sticky accelerator problem, some rear guard PR work has surfaced in the form a video apology from the company’s US President & COO, Jim Lenz.
Two versions have been created, one on a recall website page, accompanying a formal letter of apology and a longer, stranger version on YouTube that includes promotional clips of Toyota models, zooming photos of the USA HQ and cars being made in the factory, presumably cut from an old corporate video.
Watching Jim Lenz explain that he wouldn’t put his family and friends in a Toyota if they weren’t safe is reminiscent of MP John Gummer feeding that beefburger to his 4 year old daughter at the height of the UK BSE crisis in 1990.
In the US, Toyota’s reaction to the crisis has also been criticised for being too late and too centralised, not allowing local dealers to communicate quickly with their customers or enabling a dialogue online. Toyota’s general Facebook page, which has 70,000 fans, presumably mostly customers, directs enquiries to their static website recall page. More »
YouTube has announced it’s going into the movie rental business, starting with five films from the Sundance Film Festival, available from January 31st.
YouTube says it is reacting to movie maker requests for a finance model online that doesn’t rely on advertising – which doesn’t always fit their distribution and monetisation needs.
The Google Inc. owned company indicated that this is the beginning of an expansive plan to offer movie makers a new way of managing the distribution of their films.
“These are early days and in the coming weeks we’ll also invite a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate in this new option”, YouTube said on their blog.
Google, which has struggled to make a profitable business out of YouTube after buying it in 2006 for $1.65 billion, may see pay-per-view as its best bet to grow revenues. More »
Converging unusually with my tech pr orbit today is a beauty sector online pr campaign for Lash Allure MD who offered amateur vloggers a prize of $100,000. Competitors had to say what they would do with the money if they won it with the winner selected by public vote.
The winner has just been announced as 19 year old New Yorker Meekakitty, a rising YouTube comedy star, with 135K subscribers to her channel and close to 2 million views of her posts. Here’s the winning entry:
