Trevor Noah Stars on YouTube, and More Mid-Term Social Video Data

Polls already started to close this evening, but U.S. mid-term voting conversations have been going on for far longer than just Election Day.We partnered with social video intelligence company Tubular Labs to look at the trends dominating video content around the mid-terms for the last 90 days. The results tell an interesting story on video consumption and the creators that have been driving eyeballs in the lead-up to the big day.Over the last 90 days, there have been over 3,000 Facebook videos published around the mid-terms, earning over 100 million views. On YouTube, there have been 6,000 mid-term videos, but over 50 million views on those.Those numbers are different, clearly, as are the creators that push those figures forward.Looking solely at news publishers, digital-first creators seem to dominate on Facebook. NowThis, owned by Group Nine Media, made up the top four mid-term news publisher creators on the site in the last 90 days.NowThis Politics led the way with 29 million views across its midterm videos, followed by NowThis Election (12.3 million), NowThis (6.7 million) and NowThis Opinions (5.4 million). The top five was rounded out by another digital-first publication, Cuomo Prime Time (3.3 million), from CNN. The Facebook Watch program showed significant growth in the last three months, from 40,900 subscribers in July up to 91,600 in September.ABC News was the lone network (non-cable) news publisher in the top 10 for mid-term Facebook video views in this stretch. NowThis (eight of 10) and Cuomo Prime Time made (two) up all 10 of the most-viewed Facebook mid-term videos from news publishers.It was largely the opposite story on YouTube, though. There, traditional broadcasters were the predominant news publishers around mid-term content (in the last 90 days): MSNBC (7.9 million) led the way, followed by Fox News (4.4 million), CNN (4.1 million) and the Daily Show (2.8 million). Speaking of the Daily Show, Trevor Noah starred on Youtube when looking at individual videos. The program accounted for four of the top 10 most-viewed mid-term videos from news publishers. Also showing up in the top 10 individual videos were MSNBC, CNN, Fox News and left-leaning program the Ring of Fire. Interestingly, five of the top 10 videos were "prediction"-type coverage, indicating a larger appetite for that sort of content (no surprise that this is the Super Bowl for FiveThirtyEight every two years).Further looks outside of "news"-specific creators show differing strategies for liberal- and conservative-leaning programming altogether. Late night comedy shows were the dominant mid-term YouTube video creators (non-news) over the last 90 days, according to Tubular Labs. SNL, Stephen Colbert, Seth Myers and Samantha Bee were all sitting high on the charts when sorted by views. And while conservative-leaning creators were found plenty on YouTube, the leaderboards (for creators and individual videos) did seem to favor liberal-leaning content up at the top.On Facebook, conservative publications were more prevalent among the most-viewed video content producers. American Voices (product of the Daily Caller) was No. 1, followed by Fox Business Voices and CRTV's Here's the Deal. Other CRTV programs (like White House Brief) also popped up plenty among the top 15 as well. Colbert, in ninth place, was the lone liberal-leaning voice in the top 10.We're working with Tubular to dig into even more following Tuesday night's results. Have any questions, though? Be sure to drop us a line.