Who Are the Online Video One Percenters? Meet the Streaming Elite

Yes, just like in the financial world, there's a one-percenter club in online video. But these aren't the one percent with the most money or the most influence: They're the one percent that go viral.

According to a Q2 2017 report by video creation platform Wochit, only 1.1 percent of all Facebook videos go viral, which means getting over 1 million views. Wochit found that just 1.1 percent of all videos get 43.2 percent of all views and 63.98 percent of all shares.

Expanding that a bit, Wochit finds there's a top-20 as well: 19.85 percent of all videos got over 100,000 views. This group got 39.96 percent of all views and 30.51 percent of all shares.

So where does that leave the rest? Picking up crumbs. Wochit says 79.05 percent of all videos get under 100,000 views, which is only 16.85 percent of all viewing activity. Worse, this group gets only 5.52 percent of all shares.

In a notable trend, Wochit sees the average video getting longer. While 77.8 percent of all videos are still between 30 and 90 seconds long, the number of videos over 90 seconds in length increased by 38 percent in Q2.

What made creators decide to go long? Was it viewer demand or a new attitude about long-form content? No, says Wochit, it was because of Facebook's mid-roll ads.

"Longer videos open monetization opportunity through Facebook mid-roll, something two-thirds of participants in our earlier survey planned on exploring," Wochit's report says. Viewers have no problem with longer videos, as engagement numbers for long-form content are up. Longer videos are getting more shares and more views per video. It's still a small trend—videos over 90 seconds in length made up just 15.4 percent of the total in Q2—but look for it to continue.

For more, download Wochit's Q2 2017 report for free (no registration required).

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net