Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend Is… YouTube
- Editor rating:
- Average user rating:
- Your rating (rate it!):
- Write your own review »
The first single from pop star Avril Lavigne’s third album (The Best Damn Thing) and No. 1 Billboard hit in the U.S. in 2007, Girlfriend recently achieved online notoriety when its video ousted YouTube’s longtime most-viewed champ, Evolution of Dance, on July 18, 2008.
Dance, uploaded by inspirational comedian Judson Laipply in April ‘06 just months after YouTube’s launch, held the top spot for almost two years. In an attempt to explain the vid’s appeal, NYTimes columnist Virginia Heffernan cited its lack of spoken word: American pop culture distilled and recognizable to all, no language skills needed.
So it was somewhat surprising when Girlfriend, a catchy but ultimately forgettable pop tune in which Lavigne expresses her desire to be with a boy who already has a girlfriend (and which was uploaded a year after Dance), overtook the reigning vid. Is the Sk8er Boi posse so big?
Probably not, but apparently they know their Internets. In an explicit attempt to push Girlfriend to the most-viewed vid (evar!), the fan site AvrilBandAids.com created a refresher page to goose the vid’s view stats. Leave the page open and it refreshes every 15 seconds, each time creating a new view for the video.
The resulting success of the video has caused some public relations problems for YouTube, which relies on its view counts for advertising dollars. The site avows that safeguards are in place to detect false ad impressions, and recently stated that autoplays do not count towards a video’s visible view count.
However, YouTube’s policy is to remove videos from the most-played section if it discovers their view count has been gamed. Since Girlfriend, as of this writing, remains the most-viewed vid, it follows that YouTube has not detected any false impressions (highly unlikely given the publicity of the Girlfriend campaign and YouTube’s insistence on its safety protocols). Even less likely, YouTube could have already removed false impressions from Girlfriend — thus implying that Girlfriend’s view count is entirely natural.
A third option is that YouTube has reached an accommodation with RCA, Avril’s label, that allows the vid to retain its No. 1 position. Spreading some good will among record labels, perhaps?
Whichever the case, Girlfriend is notable less for ascending to the No. 1 spot and more for what that ascension implies about the quality of YouTube’s view tracking and the priorities of the company. As long as Girlfriend remains the most viewed vid, YouTube is either unreliable or willfully negligent.
See our previous coverage:
Sponsor Gallery
Become a sponsor »About NewTeeVee Station
NewTeeVee’s latest project, launched in June 2008, is NewTeeVee Station, an editorially-driven guide to quality online video. Want to find something good to watch? Want to get the lowdown on something all the kids are talking about, like “Soulja Boy” or combining Mentos and Diet Coke? Want to meet the rising stars of the new age of television before they get huge? NewTeeVee Station is your cheat sheet, cataloging the world of web video with an engaging voice and a critical eye. It’s also a community site, giving you increased power to express what you like, what you don’t, and what else you want to watch.
© 2009 The GigaOM Network. Marketing consulting by ACS.
Comments
xsive, July 23, 2008 at 2:09 PM
That’s an interesting take. but I’m more for facts, so let’s look at those.
2 months after “Girlfriend” video was put on youtube it had 50,000 comments and 25million views. after that “girlfriend had a steady stream of about 1 million views a week (and it still does). on June 19th 2008 when Avrilbandaids posted the so called refresher page “Girlfriend had 88.0 Million views, That night the counter on the Avrilbandaids page recorded 1.3 million views , however the views on the video only went up by the standard 150,000 for the day, which is always the case for that video. shortly after that Youtube disabled the ability to view the video from a frame within a page. so now 1 month later it finally passed EOD, which if you look at the history of gains for “Girlfriend” over “EOD” you will notice that that works out perfectly, as Girlfriend usually gets about 20k to 30k more views per day, (all of this information is available on TubeMogul). now 5 days after it overtook EOD it has 100k more views which again is exactly on track. “Girlfreind” has always been getting closer and closer to overtaking the top spot on youTube, and it finally did .
The fact is that “girlfriend” was in second place for a year, and it was always getting more views per day, so it was just a matter of time before it overtook EOD. The most interesting fact is that the Girlfriend video cannot be embedded like EOD, so all of those views came from people watching it on Youtube, Unlike EOD which is placed all over the web.
Karen, July 23, 2008 at 9:38 PM
I think that I am with you ‘XSIVE’ on this, I am all about the facts about this situation too, and the facts that I looked in to have lead me to the same conclusion as yours. Also the fact the Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend video was the most (legally bought) and downloaded song in 2007 lends even more credibility to the fact that Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend video was indeed a very popular video. Even more evidence to support the popularity of Avril Lavigne is the fact that Avril Lavigne was the best selling female artist in the world in 2007, according to WorldwideAlbums.net/2007ye.htm – And finally, the fact that Avril Lavigne now has the most NO. 1 Top 40 Hits This Decade, according to Billboard magazine, the Billboard article said that Avril Lavigne has ascended to a lofty pedestal: The 22-year-old now has the most No. 1 top 40 hits this decade at “five” and is the No. 2 artist in the 14-year history of Nielsen BDS, behind Mariah Carey’s six chart-toppers. —Chuck Taylor billboard.com/bbcom/content_display/reviews/singles/e3i6337374c02990aa382432d13494ab554 -It seems to me that with the kind of popularity of Avril Lavigne holds, it could have pushed her Girlfriend video to the most viewed video on YouTube quite easily.
Mitchell D. Stein Sr., July 24, 2008 at 7:58 PM
youtube changes the rules?
Beyonce vs. Britney: Station Conversation - NewTeeVee Station, October 18, 2008 at 9:55 AM
[...] Jill: And then there’s that freaking throne and tiara they gave Avril. [...]