Viral publisher Unilad has beaten off competition from the likes of the Daily Mail and Cristiano Ronaldo to be named the world’s most engaged Facebook page and online video channel for 2016.
Unilad has become well known on social media for its humorous fan-sourced videos. The publisher has also experimented with more native and branded content in 2016.
According to data from Tubular Labs, the Manchester-based publisher Facebook content picked up almost one billion Facebook likes, comments and shares across the year.
Over the past 12 months, the independent media company has also clocked up over 25bn video views across YouTube, Facebook, Vine and Instagram.
Unilad, which has 55 staff split between Manchester and London, has over 23 million likes on its flagship Facebook page and several million more likes across subsidiary pages including Unilad Tech, Sound, Adventure, Fitness and Gaming.
Fellow Manchester publisher The LAD Bible was named the world’s third most engaged Facebook page last year, with the second highest number of video views.
Sharing the news via LinkedIn, Unilad co-founders Sam Bentley and Liam Harrington said the site took pride in “always being organic”, with Bentley hinting that this year’s success hasn’t been down to a big spend, saying: “we didn’t achieve that by throwing loads of money at things, but with a small team who consistently strive to be the best at what they do.”
Elsewhere, the Lad Bible and BuzzFeed’s food offering Tasty took third and fourth place respectively. Christiano Ronaldo ranked fifth with just above 457m fan interactions last year despite having the biggest Facebook fandom among the top five.
Source: https://tubularlabs.com/