YouTube more popular than TV and Greenpeace goes LEGO

In this week’s social wrap, a study shows that YouTube is more popular amongst viewers than live TV – proving that social media is eclipsing old-school media platforms. This week’s viral video comes from Greenpeace, who have released a savvy ad criticising LEGO’s partnership with oil company Shell.

Also in the news: the World Cup smashes social media records and Facebook starts prioritising political content in its news feed algorithm. Read on to find out more!

A study by market research company Adroit Digital found that more consumers engage with video content via YouTube than they do on their television sets.

The study found that whereas 68% of viewers are likely to consume video content via YouTube, only 49% do it via live TV. This is a huge shift, considering the fact that YouTube is less than ten years old.

One catch: the survey only captured responses from U.S. users who own a smartphone, television and computer. So it seems that young, engaged audiences are likely to get their video from social media – but is that news? Also, the study excludes users under the age of 18. We bet that that’s a market that is almost exclusively on YouTube rather than television.

This week’s viral video is a clever little piece of political communication by Greenpeace, who want LEGO to cut all ties from controversial oil company Shell. The video shows a frozen in time tableau of a drilling scene in the Arctic, re-enacted with LEGO characters who are slowly swallowed up by rising oil.

The video received over three million views on YouTube in two days, before being taken down over a copyright claim. Luckily for us, it’s still available on Vimeo. Why was it so successful? A few things:

Political advocacy works. Green causes are very popular amongst engaged, social media-savvy young people.

A beloved toy brand. Videos of elaborate LEGO setups are always a hit, even if they’re not particularly favourable to LEGO!

A call to action. This is a brand video with a purpose – one that invites its viewers to get involved.

It turns out that some of the most cohesive and interesting brand messages come from the non-profit sector. Controversy attracts attention!

It seems like this year’s Football World Cup final in Brazil has dominated social media, breaking records for sporting events across the web. Over at Facebook, the game between Germany and Argentina became the most popular sporting event ever on the platform, beating even last year’s NFL Superbowl in terms of interactions. Not surprisingly, the second most popular World Cup match on Facebook was Germany’s brutal 7 – 1 victory over Brazil the week before.

Over at Twitter, the final broke the network’s tweet-per-minute record, garnering a staggering 618,720 tweets every 60 seconds. Seems like football fans are some of the most engaged on social media!

Whether or not you’re a political person, you’ve almost certainly noticed that political debates are a huge part of Facebook. The geniuses behind the News Feed are picking up on the sharing potential of partisan political content, and they’re encouraging it.

It seems like political websites like Mother Jones are getting just as much Facebook engagement as reliable click targets like Buzzfeed and Upworthy, and Facebook are making sure this involved political content is being served front and centre.

Stay tuned next week for more updates from the Social Wrap!