YouTube Analytics…sort of
Filed under: Analytics, Social Marketing on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 by Nate LinnellYesterday, Google announced that anyone with a YouTube account can now access statistics for the videos that they’ve uploaded. Among the stats you can see is the trend for views, along with where in the world the views are coming from. This allows you to see the lifecycle of the video; as well to as get an idea of the impact that other initiatives you undertake & the ability this traffic affects your videos.
In addition, you can see the popularity of your videos relative to the other videos in the same category. The popularity is also shown as a trend, over a time period that you pick - as well as by geographic region.
While this is a good start, there is a great deal of room for improvement. One major piece of data that is missing - that I’d like to see added - is details on how much of the video is actually viewed. This would be a huge benefit to video creators by allowing them to further understand & gauge their audience. They would be able to tell the length of time that best fits their target market; as well as begin to learn what aspects of their videos tend to lose the attention of viewers. This would allow users to produce higher quality videos that resonate well with their audience and potentially, begin to expand their viewership.
However, the top addition I would suggest is to release Google Analytics for YouTube. This would be incredibly beneficial for YouTube users who are interested in knowing who their audience is. They could better understand how people find their videos and begin to leverage similar sources to gain a larger audience. They would also understand what segments are more likely to be engaged by commenting on videos, subscribing to the video feed, or in the case of non-profits donating through their YouTube channel.
These are just a couple ways Google Analytics for YouTube would be helpful. There are countless other ways it could be used to benefit video creators and Google/YouTube, but for now you’ll just have to settle for analyzing the trends for views and popularity by region.
