I don’t know if I’ve ever been as confused as I am right now — John Oliver

John Oliver is on a tear. Like Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, but John Oliver’s just going to shake it off kinda tear.

The astonishing thing about John Oliver is not the number of views his videos get, but the Attention they received.

The average playtime for videos such as Drones, Prison, Dr. Oz and Wealth Gap on Reddit is about 12 minutes and 15 seconds. User’s on average watch 85% of the video with a total playtime of 3.6 years.

You, fine reader, are in for a treat. We are going to look at some of Mr. Oliver’s finest works to draw some conclusions about the finest man in the business.

1. John Oliver vs Dr. OZ

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Dr. Oz and Nutritional Supplements (HBO)

“Any seat Dr. Oz is sitting on is the hot seat”

Embedly saw 72,815 impressions of this video on over 52 different domains. Reddit is the leading indicator in determining how well videos will do on Embedly as a whole. The following shows a graph of impressions per hour over the top 5 domains.

You can clearly see as the video gets more popular it hits an inflection point, and then more domains start picking up the video. This network effect also works inside of Reddit, getting popular on one subreddit and moving toward smaller subreddits.

The power law does apply here, the top subreddit (r/videos) got 94% of the impressions.

John Oliver’s Rule #1: Dominate one site, the viral effects will take over.

2. John Oliver vs Scotland.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Scottish Independence

“We are still roleplaying with wooden swords to try to emotionally work through it.”

Every once in awhile you have to look outside the US for some love. For videos not directly impacting the U.S. (i.e. not Prisons, Drones or the 1st) we see a wider variance in domains. Below maps the top 10 domains for this video and you can see there is no clear winner, but wider number of sites embedding the video.

John Oliver’s Rule #2: Know thy audience.

3. John Oliver vs Student Debt

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Student Debt (HBO)

“Plus you don’t get to hang out with a bunch of lovable scamps, for let’s say 6 seasons and a movie.”

Everyone makes mistakes and well, so does John. Below is the Attention heatmap based on the number of users that watched each segment.

When John Oliver starts using a clip from ABC News here he loses about 30% of users. 30%. This is over 15,582 users, so everyone felt pretty much the same way.

John Oliver’s Rule #3: learn from your mistakes.

4. John Oliver vs Taylor Swift

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Real Animals, Fake Paws Footage

I leave you with one final thought.

Fact. The average person would rather watch 4 minutes of John Oliver’s Real Animals, Fake Paws Footage than 4 minute’s of Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off”. 67% of users vs 32% of users.

John Oliver’s Rule #4: Players gonna play, play, play.

Taylor Swift — Shake It Off