It now has almost two million total subscribers across its YouTube network, which includes The Guardian (1,000,000), Guardian News (527,000), Guardian Football (134,000) and Owen Jones talks (129,000).
The publisher has been building its video audience over the last two years, and specifically on YouTube this has resulted in doubling its video views and an increase of more than 160% in subscriber growth.
The Guardian’s success on the platform has been driven by a mixture of video formats such as documentaries, explainers and news features - Anywhere but Westminster (1.4m views) The Trap documentary (5.97m views) performed well, while Beyond Bionics (2.36m views) and explainers like Is Brexit definitely going to happen? (428k views) also contributed.
The publisher’s original series, Modern Masculinity, attracted a younger demographic and achieved some of the highest engagement on the channel, with a total of 1.36m views, 7.25m minutes watched, 66k likes, 10.7k shares and 8k comments. According to The Guardian, reaction to the episodes has been positive, with the YouTube community describing the series as ‘inquisitive, open and respectful’ and ‘honest and objective journalism’.
Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief, Guardian News & Media, said: “To reach 1 million subscribers on YouTube is a huge achievement. This is testament to our long-term investment in groundbreaking video journalism which provides a positive, trusted voice on the biggest video search engine in the world.”
Christian Bennett, executive editor, visual journalism, said: “We are building a large engaged community around our video journalism and YouTube is enabling us to reach new readers – over half of our audience on the platform is under 34.
“From the Modern Masculinity series, which focuses on the issues faced by men and boys across the UK, to the award-winning Anywhere but Westminster and our video explainers, we provide our viewers with a broad range of trusted perspectives.”
The Guardian has also seen success in documentary formats - in March this year the Guardian-commissioned documentary, Black Sheep, was nominated for an Oscar in the Documentary Short Subject category. Another Guardian-commissioned documentary, Skip Day, won the prestigious Illy best short film award at the Quinzaine Des Realisateurs section of the Cannes film festival last year.
