Tubular Trends: Live Events Bring In Big Views

By Henley Worthen · November 05, 2021

This week served as a stark reminder of the power of live coverage, with both the election day and Baseball World Series sending viewers en masse to social platforms for highlights, reactions, and more. 

Below, we’re looking at…

  • Election Day News
  • World Series Tweets
  • Gross Ratings Points

News Viewers Vote For YouTube

This week, election coverage dominated the U.S. News category on YouTube, with Fox News leading the charge by a mile. This week, every one of the top 10 most-viewed YouTube videos in the U.S. News category was about the election results. 9/10 of those videos were uploaded by Fox News.

Looking specifically at Fox News results, election coverage also delivered eight of its top 10 YouTube views for the week. In fact, the day after the election— Wednesday, Nov. 3 —was Fox News’ highest single-day YouTube audience in a year with over 20 million views, and its second-highest single-day audience in the last three years. The only day that surpassed it was the day after the 2020 presidential election, which delivered 47 million views.

Worth noting is the overlap between the major cable news channels. According to our Audience Overlap analysis, 15% of Fox News viewers have also watched CNN, and 12% watched MSNBC. Meanwhile, 26% of MSNBC viewers have also tuned into Fox News, and 42% have watched CNN. Among CNN viewers, 30% have also watched MSNBC, and 24% have also watched Fox. Fox has the lowest crossover rate meaning their audience is more loyal to the network, while MSNBC and CNN share more viewers.

Twitter Hits The World Series Out Of The Park

The World Series ended this week as the Atlanta Braves defeated the Houston Astros in six games. 

On social media, Facebook generated the most overall views for the highlights that Major League Baseball provided, with nearly 30 million views. But the league uploaded the highest volume of content to Twitter, with more than 90 individual videos. 

The Braves leaned into Twitter, uploading 35 videos that collectively generated 6.2 million views during the series. Meanwhile, the Houston Astros uploaded 36 videos to Twitter in the same timeframe but generated only 3.2 million views.

Individual player highlights took the primary on Twitter. The most-watched video from the series featured the Brave’s Jorge Soler hitting a crushing home run that cleared the ballpark entirely. The video generated over 2 million views on Twitter in less than 24 hours. That’s more than Adam Duvall’s grand slam home run in Game 5, which only generated 1.5 million views. 

When it comes to real-time engagement around appointment viewing events like live sports, Twitter is the platform of choice. 

More Than Views — Introducing Gross Ratings Points

In the aftermath of the Ozy Media scandal, it’s evident that trusted third-party measurement is necessary for media companies and those looking to buy against growing properties. We recently introduced our new gross ratings point system — the first of its kind designed for social video. The new GRP measurement helps marketers plan content and measure viewership against target audiences while comparing across platforms to optimize investments. 

Measuring viewership by unique views alone is not sufficient. For example, the NFL’s 22.7 million unique viewers rank 25th among the most prominent media & entertainment channels in the U.S. for September. But our GRP rating elevates its ranking to 8th based on indications that NFL viewers watch more frequently than other channels with similar unique viewer totals. Sesame Street is another example. It ranks 36th for U.S. unique viewers with 18.8 million but ranks 13th in GRP score. 

For far too long, marketers haven’t been able to access quality-controlled viewership ratings to partner effectively and project with accuracy. At Tubular, we are building a measurement standard that makes social video marketing more accessible. 

Interested in similar social video insights for your own business? Contact Tubular Labs for a demo today.

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