Limited by how many times a video has been viewed, publishers of YouTube videos have been left largely in the dark about how their video is consumed by the public. Last week YouTube made a step in the right direction for content publishers with the announcement of YouTube Insight. From the YouTube blog:
…uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.
The blog posting on YouTube’s site indicated that new features will be added to the reporting capabilities quickly. That’s good news—the initial roll out features are welcomed, but aren’t all that robust or useful—especially after the drought of information previously available. YouTube, here’s a few useful metrics to add to your list:
- Average duration of video view in minutes:seconds
- How many times the video was shared
- Views on syndication sites by syndication URL
- Viewer demographic information
YouTube: if you need more ideas on what your users really want, contact me, or better, look at your user feedback over the past few years.
Oh, and one more thing. I’ve got enough places to track data. Why can’t we just get this data inside Google Analytics?
Also see:
- The original post on YouTube’s blog
- YouTube Insight blog post on The Official Google Blog
- YouTube Insight: Underwhelming – Conde Nast Portfolio.com
