Our biggest hit episode of the past two weeks was ThreadBanger’s roundup of the Top 10 Halloween Costumes, and the video’s life cycle shows the power of YouTube and iTunes editorial spotlights in seeding contagious video views, and how big media attention can follow.

ThreadBanger has been building audience organically for years: currently the network averages over 1.2 million episode views monthly, and on YouTube the network averages around 30,000 views a day. However, with big features on iTunes and YouTube in October, ThreadBanger amassed 1 million views in a single week.

The Top 10 episode, posted on October 13, amassed around 40,000 views in its first week from subscribers, search traffic (for keywords like “halloween costumes”) and viral sharing on the site.  On October 24, the episode was chosen by YouTube’s editors for a full-day homepage editorial spotlight, along with the ThreadBanger channel page.  The result was a two-day spike in traffic of over 330,000 views on the episode, and another 200,000 views to other episodes on the ThreadBanger channel.

After the spotlight ended, we saw continued increased traffic to ThreadBanger’s YouTube Channel, averaging over 60,000 views, and 1500 new subscribers to the YouTube channel.

An interesting point was where the views came from: fully 32% of the viewership came from YouTube’s mobile site and iPhone app, where homepage spotlight episodes are featured.  This equalled over 200,000 views from mobile devices, signaling a major, growing source of viewership that’s not considered by many web video producers.

The following week also saw a major feature for ThreadBanger on iTunes, resulting in a 400% increase in weekly downloads and a 200% increase in subscribers for the ThreadBanger video podcast, according to Feedblitz.

On Nov 1st, CBS Sunday Morning News featured the episode in their “By the Numbers” roundup as the YouTube video of the week, a segment that also featured Michael Jackson’s “This is It” and CBS’s NCIS as the other big hits of media for the week.

Finally, according to Quantcast and Google Analytics, we saw a 20% week-over-week increase in traffic to ThreadBanger’s website after the features, and total October traffic and uniques increased over 10% from September, showing that increased superdistribution can also drive traffic to your home destination.

And now, the list…

Next New Networks’ Top 10 New Episodes, October 2009:

1. ThreadBanger:  Twilight, Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Top Ten Halloween Costumes 2009
2. Indy Mogul: Beyond the Trailer, ‘Paranormal Activity’ Movie Review
3. Barely Digital:  Steve Porter Remixes COMMUNITY
4. Barely Digital: Key of Awesome Ep. 1: MetalliKittens!
5. Fast Lane Daily:  DMC, Lexus LF-A, McLaren MP4-12C - 10/08/2009
6. Indy Mogul:  Halloween Trick-or-Treat Rap Video: Original Short
7. Barely Digital: Girl Fight! Follow Me with Andrea Feczko, Ep 4
8. Barely Digital: Key of Awesome Ep. 2: Trick or Treat or Die!
9. Threadbanger: How To Make a Lady Gaga Costume
10. Ultra Kawaii: Big Fat Lazy Cats! Animal Idol Ep. 5

Thanks! Stay tuned for our next report, and we appreciate your comments and feedback as always.