YouTube’s 100 biggest channels’ videos were watched nearly 10.2bn times in August, with gamer Felix ‘PewDiePie’ Kjellberg continuing his reign as the most popular YouTuber.
Kjellberg’s videos were watched 449.2m times in August, according to the latest chart published by online video industry site Tubefilter, and based on date from analytics firm OpenSlate. PewDiePie also added more than 1.1m new subscribers on YouTube, taking his total to 30.4m.
In August 2013, Kjellberg’s channel generated 211.2m video views with 12.8m subscribers, so he has more-than doubled his audience and viewing year-on-year.
The latest Tubefilter chart reveals an eclectic mix of games, music and toys as the biggest channels on YouTube. Brazilian toy-unboxing channel DisneyCollector was the second most popular in August, with 324.4m views.
While PewDiePie’s views are driven by his huge number of subscribers, DisneyCollector operates differently. It has significantly less subscribers – 2.2m – but its viewing is more about parents and children searching for toy brands including My Little Pony, Disney and Peppa Pig.
Pop star Katy Perry took third place in the August rankings, with 226.1m views edging her ahead of child-friendly Minecraft gamer Stampy’s 217.9m.
Stampy and PewDiePie are both signed to multi-channel network (MCN) Maker Studios, as is sixth-ranked channel The Diamond Minecart (190.6m views in August) and ninth-placed Vegetta777 (163m), putting that company in a powerful position in the emerging world of YouTube games media.
Another MCN, music videos service Vevo, fulfils an even more dominant role for music on YouTube, accounting for 23 of the 100 most popular YouTube channels in August. Besides Katy Perry, its biggest channels that month included Enrique Iglesias (202.2m) and Nicki Minaj (187.1m).
Minaj’s YouTube views increased by 258% month-on-month, fuelled by her Anaconda music video. Released on 19 August, it has already been watched more than 217m times.
YouTube’s overall growth – or at least, that of its biggest channels – is shown by the aggregated figures for Tubefilter’s chart. The top 100 channels’ 10.2bn views in August 2014 is nearly double the 5.4bn views of the top 100 in August 2013.
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