A new study has revealed that Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) YouTube stars who boast over ten million subscribers have seen a sharp decrease in viewership. The study was conducted by SocialBlade, a tracker of social statistics, with Kotaku commissioning it.
Among the highlights of the study was the fact that at the beginning of the year in January, the top 50 channels had average daily views of 4.1 million. This, however, dropped to a little over 3.7 million views ten months later. The decline in viewership mostly happened in the second half of 2016. Channels belonging to major media organizations such as TV networks and record labels were excluded and the study only concentrated on channels led by personalities such as PewDiePie and Jacksepticeye.
Cause unknown
The results of the study have ignited debate on whether the decline in viewership is a result of decreasing interest in videos of YouTube personalities or whether YouTube has changed how it counts views. One theory being pushed around is that YouTube is purging views that it considers as having been generated by bots as opposed to real human beings. The problem with this theory is that it fails to explain a decline that has been going on for months.
There has also been speculation that the declining viewership numbers are a consequence of a tweak in the search ad promotion algorithms that YouTube employs which are assigning less weight to the number of subscribers when doing an evaluation of individual videos. Though YouTube has denied it, there has also been speculation that YouTube is engaged in an effort of unsubscribing users.
Figures questioned
The figures from SocialBlade have been criticized by no less than YouTube itself. The social statistics tracker has however stood by its study.
“Ouch ;( We don’t make up data. We get it from the YouTube API. We rely on it for accuracy. If it has issues maybe ping them?” SocialBlade tweeted back in response to critics who were casting doubt on the study.
In the last trading session that took place on December 23, 2016, shares of Alphabet fell by 0.23% to close the day at $807.80.