Each month, our partner Visible Measures compiles a list of the top 10 most popular web video series, and we share those results with you and provide analysis. Visible Measures tracks views, comments and other data on web video.
If you’re looking for some video entertainment to watch online during your lunch break, this chart is a great place to start. Just find a show you’re interested in and click the play button to the right to check it out.
Alt-rock band Weezer invaded YouTube in September, making cameos in 15 web series. Three of them are in this list. And our wish was the web’s command as we longed for a new entrant to the chart and got one from Totally Sketch — but be warned that it’s definitely NSFW. Here’s the list!
The Chart: September 2010
| Rank | Last Month’s Rank | Title | Studio | Genre | True Reach View Count | Change in Views | Sample Episode | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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*The Visible Measures Top 10 Webisodes Chart focuses on digital studio-driven web series that appear on Internet video-sharing destinations and publisher microsites. Each web series is measured on a True Reach™ basis, which includes viewership of both studio-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures platform, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 200 million Internet videos across more than 200 video destinations.
If you are a webisode publisher and would like clips from your microsites to be counted toward the chart, please contact Visible Measures.
Note: This chart does not include vloggers, interviews, how-to series, news shows or product review shows. View-count results are incremental by month.
To notify Visible Measures of an upcoming web series, or for an end-to-end assessment of your campaign’s overall performance, please contact Visible Measures directly.
If you’re interested in exploring this data further, go to visiblemeasures.com/mashable .
Weezer’s YouTube Invasion
How does a band of geeky musicians promote its new album in an over-saturated music industry with a short attention span? By appearing in a bunch of YouTube videos, of course.
You may have heard of the British Invasion — alt-rock band Weezer has staged what it calls a “YouTube invasion.” Three of Visible Measures’ top four performers in September — The Annoying Orange, Auto-Tune the News and Fred — featured cameos from Weezer.
We interviewed Weezer about this strategy last month and concluded that this is the direction music promotion is going. In fact, there are plenty of artists out there who are Internet marketers first and musicians second. We wouldn’t argue that Weezer is among them, but the band clearly has some savvy.
YouTube is a great place for music to achieve worldwide recognition. Auto-Tune the News has demonstrated this on multiple occasions, and as seen in the upcoming documentary by LXD creator Jon Chu, Justin Bieber achieved success through YouTube as well.
A (NSFW) New Challenger Arrives
When we took a look at August’s chart, we lamented the lack of newcomers. Had this dynamic medium already become stagnant, with unshakable champions holding on to the top spots as the case often is in other media? Not necessarily, it turns out; we got one new entrant to the chart in Totally Sketch.
Granted, the series isn’t new — it’s just new to the top 10. The video that brought it there is named “Butterd*ck,” and it’s (as you might have guessed from the name) not safe for work. We’re not passing judgment, but we would also love to see some more sophisticated content in the top 10.
We’re thrilled to see a new entrant nonetheless, even if it is not for everybody. Truth be told, sex sells on YouTube. Remember the “How to Make a Successful Online Video” gag from Red vs. Blue that we covered last month? They weren’t making that stuff up, people.
More Web Video Resources from Mashable:
- 10 Best Viral Video Remixes on YouTube
- 5 Indie Films that Couldn’t Be Made Without Social Media
- 10 Incredibly Inspirational Moments on YouTube [VIDEOS]
- 5 Hilarious Gadget Unboxing Videos
- 8 YouTube Channels for Unique Music Performances
Reviews: Internet, YouTube, news
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