- So, PewDiePie thinks his channel might be dying.
Let's investigate.
(upbeat music)
Life as YouTube's largest solo video creator,
you see what I did there,
has been turbulent for PewDiePie.
As this Google Trend graph shows,
overall interest has waned,
with the exception of occasional controversies,
but to his credit, PewDiePie has been able
to ride and eventually overcome.
But we all know why this trend graph shows apparent decline,
it's because interest in him and his rivals
have become the most subscribed to channel
on YouTube, T-Series, dwarfed
all the other things PewDiePie's done in the past.
(dinging)
But we all knew this story would come to an end
and it abruptly did when PewDiePie asked his audience
to stop the subscribe to PewDiePie meme.
And what effect did that have
for PewDiePie's google search term?
Yup, interest fell through the floor.
T-Series became the subscriber king
and we all moved on.
Now in a recent PewDiePie video,
he did go into a tiny bit of detail about his analytics
but we thought we'd take a closer look
because in reality, is PewDiePie better off today
than he was a year ago?
Well, let's start off with this golden nugget of data.
PewDiePie's video about his analytis,
which, after seven days with seven million views,
is already performing better
than his average video, which is expected
to get six and a half million views after 28 days.
Oh, how did he get that data, Rob?
I hear you ask.
And what on earth is this tool?
I want it.
I'm glad you asked because it's now time
for the VidIQ shameless plug claxon.
(horn blaring)
In the new YouTube Creator Studio,
if you view one of your videos,
YouTube will display the expected high and low end
of views your average video is expected to get.
It's good for seeing if a particular video's done well
for your channel.
But we decided to take
that concept a monumental leap forward
because our video views comparison tool
with track the performance of any video on YouTube
during it's first 28 days
and compare it to the video's channel average,
your channel average
or any channel on YouTube's average.
And this is part of VidIQ chrome extension
that will help you research YouTube,
analyze any video on the platform,
audit your own channel and take actual steps
that'll help grow that channel.
There's a link in the video description to download it.
So with this tool, we can see how an average video performs
on PewDiePie's channel.
And since he posts every single day,
we've got plenty of videos to look at.
What you will find is that PewDiePie
is remarkably consistent with one or two exceptions,
every video gets between five and 10 million views.
Occasionally, a video may over perform it's average,
but very, very rarely will you find a dud on the channel.
But obviously, it leads to a question
that all video creators get asked.
PewDiePie has nearly 97 million subscribers
and yet, each video only gets between five
and six and a half million views.
That's less than 10%
of his potential subscribers watching his content
and not all of those views would be subscribers.
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, video creators,
when people use that statistic to battle your channel.
Urge to kill rising.
What would help, at this point,
is if we could compare PewDiePie's video view velocity
against another channel's stats.
Ah, here we go.
Now, this channel seems
to have a much more unpredictable results
with views after 28 days,
averaging between 475,000 and 900,000 views.
That's a huge variable, as represented
by the thick line graph.
But which channel is this?
Yeah, we talked about this before
and now we have the tools to prove it.
Yes, T-Series may be the most subscribed to,
independent channel on YouTube,
and to clear things up,
when I say independent, I mean independent from YouTube.
So not YouTube Music.
But, on average, less than 1% of the channel's susbscribers
will watch each video.
Now of course, this is offset
by the fact that T-Series publish several videos a day
and some of their videos get 100's of millions of views,
which helps boost the numbers.
But what you can generally argue here
is that PewDiePie has a loyal, consistent audience
because they know what to expect from every single video
whilst T-Series, by nature of it's eclectic music
and movie content,
is very much a pick and choose
what you fancy type of channel.
Now I'm not going to argue about which
is the better type of channel to have,
it just represents different generations
of the YouTube platform.
On the one hand,
you have the individual video content creator,
the personality, how YouTube was perceived for a decade
versus the big movie label, big content,
lots to see, the brand channel.
But what about the channel that achieves both?
Lots of subscribers and an amazing number of views
for the size of a channel,
we've got just the example.
Each video on this channel averages,
and let me just say that again,
averages 13 to 16 and a half million views.
But the incredible thing is that this channel
is just, and I'll say this again in relative terms,
just 21 million subscribers.
It has a quarter of subscribers
of either PewDiePie or T-Series,
yet averages at least twice as many views per video.
Of course, that channel is Mr. Beast.
If we dive into a bit of a detail,
each video on Mr. Beast's channel
seems to actually increase in velocity after 24 hours,
almost as if millions of subscribers get notifications,
flood the video, send positive signals to YouTube,
who, in turn, share the video out
to an even wider audience.
In contrast,
PewDiePie's videos follow the much more tradition route
of sharp initial velocity before tailing off
after three and seven days.
And when you look at the channels side by side,
look at how even after seven days,
Mr. Beast videos still have upward velocity
and momentum, whereas PewDiePie
and T-Series average videos completely flatten out,
like many videos do on YouTube.
That's a sign of YouTube continuing to push all
of Mr. Beast videos on browse pages
and suggested videos,
long after the videos have gone live.
You know what?
I just remembered something.
In all the excitement of using this new tool,
I've actually forgot
to answer the question I originally pitched to you.
Is PewDiePie any worse off today than he was a year ago?
Well, the stats do speak for themselves.
In May 2018, PewDiePie's channel got 218 million views.
In May 2019, PewDiePie's channel got 334 million views,
an increase of 53%.
PewDiePie, I think you're doing just fine.
As are T-Series, who are getting along just fine,
but you know what?
Mr. Beast might be doing just a little bit better.
Now, if you want to know more
about the PewDiePie versus T-Series subscriber race,
we put lots of numbers together in this video over here.
If you want to know how Mr. Beast got from five million
to 20 million subscibers in just one year,
we've got a video down there.
We'll see you on either of those right now.
Enjoy the rest of your video making day.