What are the most viewed videos online?  Here’s a list, which involves a mix of UGC, music videos, film trailers…

Not surprisingly, it echoes what I’ve been saying about online video for some time: in general, it is a great promotional platform but it has yet to become a great commercial platform.  Read more here.
Ironically, most of the videos leading the way on that list either can’t or won’t monetize the streams:

- user-generated content entries on that list would love to generate ad revenues, but they can’t because marketers shun the medium;

- while record labels and film studios could but view digital as a dangerous medium that has hitherto shrunk their businesses and will continue to do so.

- television companies who sometime put up their videos don’t know how to profit from online video: what to say, for example, of the fact that Susan Boyle’s hundreds of millions of streams weren’t even monetized at all.  Who was asleep at the wheel then?

Of course, even when gone unmonetized, these figures are nothing to sneeze at, our entire collection of clips has “only” generated 50,000,000 streams… but we’ve generated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of revenues since 2006.

Besides, for many, a promotional platform alone is great.  The guy behind that “evolution of dance” video, Judson Laipply, got a book deal out of his success.  Here’s an interview we did with him:

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