Commercials appear on YouTube's most-viewed list ... again

For several hours today, YouTube's most-viewed list showed that the day's two most watched videos were L'Oreal commercials called "Mon look, rien ne peut lui arriver" (French for "My look: nothing can happen to him/her."). The first, from a boy's perspective, had 25,000 views, and the second, from a girl's, had about 17,000. As of this writing, both had only four comments and were rated less than two stars. Yet the videos remained in the most valuable and visible positions on the site despite having hundreds of thousands of fewer views than the actual most-viewed video, a gag from BarelyPolitical.

This is not the first time a commercial advertisement has appeared on the most-viewed list without having mathematically qualified. A similar episode, also involving international content, occurred in December when a series of viral videos advertising "The Day the Earth Stood Still" appeared atop the week's most-viewed list, that time with more than 1 million fewer views than the true winner, a Miley Cyrus video.

At the time, a YouTube spokesperson wrote that the videos had appeared because of "a glitch that happened during the last site update which threw the list out of sync. They have fixed it and it should be back to normal later today."

Today, shortly after I requested a comment from YouTube about the L'Oreal videos, they disappeared from the most-viewed page.  Their comment this time around: "This was a glitch that occurred on the site. It has now been corrected."

The videos (which, as an aside, are pretty good as shampoo commercials go) are still leading the French YouTube's most-viewed list. It's difficult to tell whether they belong there, though, because the French list is all over the map, numerically -- it has videos with 700,000 views and some with 1,500.

A pattern of commercials artificially qualifying for the most-viewed pages would seem to suggest that paid commercials are treated differently than other videos in YouTube's database, or even in its search results. But screaming that YouTube is disingenuously promoting ads would seem to be a conclusion-jump. You have to think YouTube would be a little smoother than this if it wanted to start mixing ads into its browse pages. But that doesn't mean the whole thing isn't a little strange.

— David Sarno

Comments

[Felipe]

The same is happening in mexican media, you can´t distinguish wich one is real info and wich one is trying to advertize. Even the federal goverment invested in a talk show so the host would "gossip" about his national broadcast message this past week.

[Hugh Suk]

You should be fired. You're a technology column writer and you don't know the difference between Most Viewed Today, Most Viewed This Week, and Most Viewed All Time?

[anonymous]

Hugh Suk, you should be kicked off the internet. You are commenting on articles and yet do not know how to read.
"... appeared atop the week's most-viewed list..."

Other than pageviews, Partner users ($$$) also often have videos at the top of lists, even if they do not mathematically qualify for those positions.

[gersh]

"You should be fired. You're a technology column writer and you don't know the difference between Most Viewed Today, Most Viewed This Week, and Most Viewed All Time?"

ROTFLMAO!
HAHAHHAHAHHA.
pwn3d.

[Television Voyeur]

Interesting stuff, I wonder if whether it's a legitimate glitch or whether it's an attempt to game their own system to monetize the most looked at real-estate.

[John]

Youtube owners are unethical.

Why do you think swearing is still allowed on youtube when internet forums have had swear filters for decades?

Swearing elicits emotions and returning viewers = clicks for advertising.

Youtube, for financial gain, ruins childrens lives in a small way.

[qbit]

this is par for the course. i've seen "subversive" material at #1 on google video and then they just reset the views to 0 and it disappears.

total manipulation. and they're starting to do it with the web search results as well.

goodbye google....

[Anonymous]

@Hugh Suk:

If you had two brain cells you would see that the image uploaded shows the day the videos were uploaded "1 day ago". The article is explicitly talking about the day's views since the 3 videos in that first link were uploaded all "1 day ago" and the author is looking at the "most views of the day, yet the one with more view counts is not first.

And to quote the author: "For several hours today, YouTube's most-viewed list showed that the day's two most watched videos were L'Oreal commercials called "Mon look, rien ne peut lui arriver" (French for "My look: nothing can happen to him/her."). "

Notcie he says "day's two most watched videos" and NOT "all-time two most watched videos".

Next time RTFA.

▲▲ATTENTION BUMBLING IDIOTS▲▲

THERE IS NO CORPORATE CONSPIRACY PUSHING CERTAIN VIDEOS TO THE FRONT OF THE MOST VIEWED LIST. THEY HAVE A SIMPLE WAY OF DOING THAT CALLED "FEATURED VIDEOS." IF YOU'LL TAKE A LOOK AT THE MOST VIEWED LIST AT ANY TIME YOU'LL SEE THAT THERE ARE ALWAYS LESSER NUMBERS PLUGGED INTO THE HIGHER ONES. THIS IS NOT A GLITCH NOR A CONSPIRACY. THIS IS PEOPLE VIEWING CERTAIN NEW VIDEOS MORE OFTEN IN ONE DAY THAN CERTAIN OLD VIDEOS.

▼▼CONGRATULATIONS MORONS.▼▼

[charobnjak]

this is par for the course. i've seen "subversive" material at #1 on google video and then they just reset the views to 0 and it disappears.

[charobnjak]

Interesting stuff, I wonder if whether it's a legitimate glitch or whether it's an attempt to game their own system to monetize the most looked at real-estate.

[Michael VanDeMar]

*If you had two brain cells you would see that the image uploaded shows the day the videos were uploaded "1 day ago".*

That actually still means that the numbers possibly don't correlate (although with that large of a discrepancy something still might be off). If the Bush spoof got 650,000 views day 1, and only a couple of thousand the next day, whereas the 2 commercials got most of their exposure on day 2, then yeah, it could still be showing correctly. For your argument to actually mean anything, then both videos would have to show "x hours ago", since videos uploaded the same day are measured that way.

Not that Hugh Suk was in any way right, but apparently you're not that bright either.

@John:

"Why do you think swearing is still allowed on youtube when internet forums have had swear filters for decades? "

Freedom of speech, perhaps?

[Flat House Share]

I've noticed this too - its so weird!