More online viewers than ever tuned in to watch Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, which wrapped up in New York on Thursday. A little more than 630,000 people watched shows live or on-demand from 59 designers.
That's an increase of about 50% from the last fashion week in February, according to figures shared with Mashable by IMG and live-streaming provider Rightster. Viewing time was up about 40% to 20 minutes on average.
SEE ALSO: Live Streaming Fashion Week: Is It Worth the Cost?
Although unique viewership and average viewing time jumped by 50% and 40%, respectively, the total number of video views increased far more narrowly — about 9% to 918,000 — suggesting that while Fashion Week successfully attracted a wider online audience, it was not generally able to get them to watch more than one or two shows.
That's likely due to the long gaps that occur between live shows, and their general inability to start on time. A designer who encourages online fans to tune in to a 4 p.m. live stream is likely to lose many of them by the time it starts, at 4:30 or 4:35. Showgoers are used to such delays, but online audiences are free to travel elsewhere.
Which show attracted the most viewers? IMG and Rightster declined to break out individual numbers, but said that Michael Kors, Nanette Lepore, Carmen Marc Valvo, Marissa Webb and BCBG Max Azria garnered the most video views, in that order. On average, each show attracted 15,600 viewers — up from 14,000 last season.
Live video was distributed via the official Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week website, YouTube and on Rightster.com. Online publishers and bloggers — 195 in total — were also able to host live streams directly on their website, which publications like New York Magazine's fashion blog, The Cut, took advantage of.
Designers who showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week weren't the only ones to live-stream their runway shows. Fifteen designers showing at Made Fashion Week in downtown Manhattan also streamed their shows, though we were unable to track down viewership figures by publication time. Others, including Donna Karan and Marc Jacobs, hosted their live streams independently on their websites and Facebook pages.
Despite this season's growth in viewership, New York designers haven't yet been able to captivate the online audiences that some of their UK counterparts have. The showing of Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 2010 collection, one of the first to be live-streamed, attracted 3.5 million viewers on YouTube alone.
More recently, Topshop reported that more than 4 million viewers watched the debut of its Fall 2013 collection in February, which was live-streamed and then available immediately on-demand. Burberry, we imagine, also attracts an international audience of millions.
Those organizations are partly able to attract such larger audiences, we suspect, because the quality of their live-stream experiences are better. Burberry, with its sweeping panorama shots and high-definition cameras, is gorgeous to watch. Topshop has introduced features to its live stream — including the ability to view color options on products as they move down the runway — that make it novel.
Both companies also make their live streams available for viewing immediately on-demand after the shows conclude, boosting repeat, as well as first-time views.

But more importantly, Burberry and Topshop aggressively market their shows. A typical New York designer might send an email blast, and notify their social media followers about a show's live stream. Burberry and Topshop do much more, building anticipation through a pre-show trailer, and by introducing something new every season — whether it's the ability to shop from a live stream, or to capture and share screenshots using a "Shoot the Show" tool, which last season triggered 200,000 shares on social media for Topshop.
They also bring in big partners, such as Apple, Facebook and Google, for new integrations.
It's a positive sign that more online viewers are showing an interest in New York Fashion Week, but there's plenty more that designers could do to make the experience better and better-known, in order to optimize the investments they're making in live-streaming video.
Did you tune into New York Fashion Week online? Let us know in the comments.
Image: Getty Images; Screenshot: Topshop