YouTube Surf Audience Content Opportunity Analysis™ Q4 2022

Content Opportunity Methodology

1. Measure & Categorize: Sample a large number of social posts to find ones that are significantly outperforming the average.
2. ‍Identify Top Themes: Identify the themes that are resonating most with the audience by sorting the themes by their aggregated performance metrics.
3. ‍Identify a Benchmark: Identify content themes that are performing above and under an average benchmark for the industry based on views & engagements.
4. ‍Identify Opportunities: Look at the data and find the content themes that are resonating with the audience based on a set of top creators.
5. ‍Repeat For Each Platform: Repeat the analysis for every platform that matters to your brand and audience to find platform-specific opportunities.

‍

YouTube Content Bucket Definitions‍

• Raw Location Footage: Videos from this category focus on long-form compilations of raw surf footage in a specific geographic location. 
• Live Competition Stream: These videos are hosted by WSL to share every moment from international surf competitions with fans at home.
• Raw Shorts: Short-form videos that focus on the varying moments where surfers may be in the barrel or calming moments of large swells passing by. 
• Surf Film: These videos aim to direct viewers to larger films that have been made to represent different surfing trips and moments in an artful way.
• Dynamic Surf Vlog: Similar to Surf Films, however these videos vary in length and focus on candid POV styles of filming giving viewers a closer look at surfers lives.
• Historic Swells: Clips that show recent, or historical, massive wave swells and the surfers that ride them. 
• Stab Highway Competition: STAB’s series of friendly and silly mini-competitions for different surfers to compete against each other.
• Surfer vs. : Somewhat similar to Live Competitions Stream, however, these videos focus on two specific surfers competing against each other.
• Board Tests: Videos where surfers meet with a surfboard designer and test their new surfboards.
• Surf Panel: Long-form interview focused videos of the same group of surfers discussing different aspects of surfing.
  
• Surf Edit: Videos that feature beautiful surf visuals that focus on stylized editing of different surfers.

‍

Excellent performing content categories for the Surf audience on YouTube include:

‍

Good performing content categories for the Surf audience on YouTube include:

‍

Substandard performing content categories for the Surf audience on YouTube include:

‍

Low performing content categories for the Surf audience on YouTube include:

‍

Content Opportunities:

1. Raw Location Footage

Videos from this category focus on long-form compilations of raw surf footage in a specific geographic location. 

Tactics to Implement:

• Lifestyle: Segments of these videos capture the vibe of the beach in a way that emphasizes surfers playing with their dogs, talking to each other and generally enjoying the beach as other surfers attack huge swells coming into the bay.
• Characterization: Given the variations in weather patterns for surf locations, highlighting the particular areas these clips highlight personifies the location and the style of surfing seen there. 
• Title: Include the beach name or name of popular surfing spots in the video title.

Tactics to Implement:

• Hit The Spot: Develop a series that talks to local beachgoers and surfers that paints a picture of what a certain surf spot personality is through the experiences and stories of locals.

725K  Views

‍

412K Views

‍

2. Live Competition Stream

These videos are hosted by WSL to share every moment from international surf competitions with fans at home.

Tactics to Implement:

• Full Length: Although 9+ hours long, these videos act as an archived version of the entire competition to live on as evergreen content for future surf fans.  
• Professional Commentary: The entire competition is commentated from past professional surfers, making the rules and how the competition is judged more accessible for all viewers.
• Amateur Commentary: Alongside the professional commentary, users can watch the scrolling text from fellow viewers who watched it live.

360K  Views

‍

343K Views

‍

3. Raw Shorts

Short form videos that focus on the varying moments where surfers may be in the barrel to calming moments of waves and huge swells passing by. 

Tactics to Implement:

• Format: All videos in this high-performing category were posted in the format of  YouTube Shorts over the typical longer video format. 
• Moments: Each clip focuses on something very particular or specific. I.e. Surfer entering into a huge swell and progressing through the barrel. Other examples include momentary tricks performed by Surfers. 
• Raw Footage: A consistent theme in each of these videos is ensuring that none of the footage is edited beyond what was originally captured. 

377K  Views

‍

322K Views

‍

Outliers: These videos were omitted from their content buckets as ‘viral’ outliers for exceeding 3x the views and engagements of their respective benchmarks.

Raw Location Footage

Content: Surfers from different locations riding huge swells and different waves from Uluwatu.

1.1M Views

Raw Short

Content: Short video of a surfer hitting different swells.

1.5M Views

Historic Swells

Content: A surfer filming the side view of a massive swell that was the biggest over a decade.

401K Views