AJ+ leaps ahead in Facebook video content chart

AJ+, an online news channel by Al Jazeera Media Network, has leapt to third place in a chart that tracks Facebook video creators.

Data gathered by Tubular showed that AJ+ jumped four spots to become the third largest video provider in the month of December 2015, compared to the month before.

AJ+ videos were watched 592 million times in December on Facebook.

Tubular is a company which tracks video content across all platforms and devices globally.

One upload showing a barber cutting hair with a sword generated the most views of any video watched across the main social video channel last month, with 183.7 million views and 3.5 million viewer engagements.

“These are truly exciting times for AJ+. We are witnessing yet a new leap in our numbers on Facebook,” said Dima Khatib, AJ+ managing director.

“This is not something that happened overnight. It is the fruit of hard work that Al Jazeera Media Network has invested in for quite some time in order to build a product that would fit into the ever-changing digital media scene.”

In the month of December, Tasty – a BuzzFeed channel – and NowThisNews were ahead of AJ+, while BuzzFeed Food and Tip Hero were at fourth and fifth place, respectively.

AJ+ got 2.2 billion video views in 2015. The channel’s Facebook page has gathered 2.9 million likes since launching in September 2014.

Earlier this week AJ+ launched on Apple TV, making its content available through the app on the big screen.

The new tvOS App allows users to consume and engage with AJ+ content and features a unique emoji reactions feature that replaces the classic star rating system used by many publishers.