When UK publisher LADbible acquired UNILAD in October 2018, the merger of the two entities catapulted The LADbible Group to the 4th most viewed global Media and Entertainment property in the world, just behind Warner Media, Brave Bison, and The Walt Disney Company. Social Video: The New Publisher Landscape Although The LADbible Group bought UNILAD after the company went into liquidation, it’s a model example of the audience growth by acquisition model which has been active in the media and broadcast industries for ever. Both were competing for (initially) the same young male-focused audience across Facebook (‘lad’ is UK speak for ‘bro’), the target demographic of the majority of content by both publishers in the early days of Facebook video. Post-acquisition, The LADbible Group can claim a combined 2.73B views across the platform, just 157K views short of the top spot. With a newly combined 120M followers across all of their social channels, the merging of the publishers is a powerful step forward in the evolution of both audience growth and content strategy across social video. On Facebook alone, that content has generated 243M views across both publisher’s many vertical properties for brands like Cadbury, KFC, Hasbro, Oreo, and PayPal. UNILAD, LADbible: Top Video Content So what type of video content has made both UNILAD and LADbible so popular? We took and a look at the uploads to Facebook for both in the last 365 days to confirm the top content for each. The most popular video published in the last year is this always entertaining clip of a thrilled cat being wrapped up for Christmas which attracted 94.2M views and 2.4M likes, shares, and comments. Over at UNILAD, 23K video uploads to Facebook have generated 31.6B views and 722M engagements in the last 365 days.
When UK publisher LADbible acquired UNILAD in October 2018, the merger of the two entities catapulted The LADbible Group to the 4th most viewed global Media and Entertainment property in the world, just behind Warner Media, Brave Bison, and The Walt Disney Company.
Although the various UNILAD properties remain separate entities across the main social video platforms, our exclusive data confirms that the merging of the company into the LADbible family resulted in 4.3B total video views across all UNILAD and LADbible properties in October. Those numbers push The LADbible Group into the 2nd most-viewed media property in the UK, and puts the news publisher firmly in the spotlight as a force to be reckoned with in the current media landscape. By combining the audiences of LADbible and UNILAD, The LADbible Group has created a social video powerhouse with global scale.
Social Video: The New Publisher Landscape
Although The LADbible Group bought UNILAD after the company went into liquidation, it’s a model example of the audience growth by acquisition model which has been active in the media and broadcast industries for ever. While Disney buying out 20th Century Fox for 73B, & Viacom bringing AwesomenessTV onboard made headline news across the globe, what makes the merger of LADbible and UNILAD so unique is the fusion of two digital-first companies who not only grew up in the space together, but defined that space in their vertical. Both were competing for (initially) the same young male-focused audience across Facebook (‘lad’ is UK speak for ‘bro’), the target demographic of the majority of content by both publishers in the early days of Facebook video.
In the battle for views and engagement for the top…
COMMENTS