A freshman series entering into the hilariously competitive late night arena, Last Week Tonight needed a way to differentiate itself from competitors. To accomplish this feat, Last Week Tonight launched a robust YouTube channel to serve as a destination for engaging video content.
In an unprecedented and revolutionary move, the show began releasing 10+ minute in-depth segments on YouTube soon after the episode aired. Startling results poured in as clips generated millions of views within days, while consistently trending on YouTube. In addition, view-through rates soared, challenging previously held industry notions that shorter clips were the assured, higher performers.
Last Week Tonight's YouTube strategy quickly gained momentum with press outlets such as The New Yorker, Time, The Huffington Post and HitFix among others. Media outlets such as Upworthy began to amplify the show's digital strategy by embedding show clips into their Monday morning coverage. Within less than a year, Last Week Tonight became the fastest growing channel in HBO history, quickly climbing to 1.2 million subscribers and generating over 189MM views.
Last Week Tonight's strategy to upload long-form segments to YouTube after the show airs has proven to be massively effective. The top three performing videos have over 24MM views, which translates to 205MM minutes watched and 230K Likes. The success can even be seen on other digital platforms; 7% of all Last Week Tonight Season 1 tweets on Twitter mentioned YouTube, higher than any other comparable HBO show.
The best performing video to date is a segment on 'FIFA and the World Cup' with 9MM views and counting. The segment was also picked up by top media outlets like The Washington Post, Mashable, USA Today, Time, Business Insider, Huffington Post, GQ, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone.
Aside from making YouTube history, clips asking viewers to take action have caught fire, inspiring real world changes. For example, after John Oliver's clip on Net Neutrality aired, the FCC experienced an influx of comments and emails, overwhelming their servers and shutting down their website. Weeks after the segment was released online, John Oliver's segment created such an impact that it was raised during an open FCC meeting.
Other popular segments asked fans to use episode-specific hashtags to rally around causes like #GoGetThoseGeckos and #ShowUsYourPeanuts. These hashtag campaigns performed almost as well as the show's official hashtag (#LastWeekTonight), while peeking interest and driving traffic to the clips in which they were originally introduced.
Last Week Tonight has also successfully rallied fans to create their own show-inspired content with segments like 'Real Animals Fake Paws.' When John Oliver provided fans with the tools they needed to recreate Supreme Court Cases with 'puppy justices,' the results were staggering.
The show didn't stop producing videos even when it was on hiatus. Last Week Tonight shared twenty web-exclusive clips last year on topics like Pumpkin Spice, New Year's Eve, Columbus Day and even an apology to 50 Shades of Grey's Jamie Dornan. The web exclusives gained a total of 736K views and continue to pop up in the top five videos per week.
Last Week Tonight's clips continue to over-perform in Season 2, which returned Sunday, February 8th on HBO. John Oliver's long-form segment, 'Marketing to Doctors' generated over 1MM views in less than 24 hours and sparked conversation in publications like Time, Rolling Stone, Esquire and The Washington Post, setting up the second season for continued digital success.