YouTube Insight: video metrics for publishers

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Yesterday, with Google's help, the world's biggest flash conversion outfit released YouTube Insight. This allows account holders to track detailed viewing statistics about the videos they upload. The tracking data starts from November last year.

According to Tracy Chan, a YouTube product manager, 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.

To access the feature hit the About this Video button under My account. It's in the Videos, Favorites, Playlists section.

For the first time, the uploader of a YouTube video can get a country by country breakdown of where the views occurred.

It's great to find out where your video is getting the most views from, but there could be a downside for YouTube.

According to Scott James of Unruly Media, publisher of the Video Viral Chart, the value of a YouTube hit may now be seen to be considerably lower than many may have assumed.

He said: "We reckon a lot of marketers with YouTube hits on their hands are in for a rude shock. A million views in the US, India or China ain't worth a lot when you're marketing a product into UK or European markets."

Of course, most posters to YouTube aren't interested in the quality they're just after the width. But for professional users, YouTube Insight could cause a shakeout among what James calls low integrity seeding outfits.

He said: "Until now, they could drive cheap views from literally anywhere and no one would be any the wiser. Now, they're going to have to figure out how to get a European viral in front of a European audience."

And the same will go for US video virals.

That's the potential downside. Me? I like Youtube Insight. Other video sites such as Vimeo can give me day by day breakdowns but not geographical ones. I've looked into the metrics for my videos. Some that feature very English content, don't get viewed that often in America. In the bike world, using YouTube Insight, I can see that Americans are really interested in watching a video about bicycle belt drives, but there are a lot less views from the UK. Perhaps by tweaking key words I can even out the spread. Anyway, Insight is a great feature. More information has got to be good.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• you
• tube
• youtube
• vimeo
• bicycle
• insight
• google

[Teknikly]

@SSBRmaster Maybe because of time zones?

[jrstreet94]

they always freeze my views for some reason

[666T3mplar]

Me thinks he has a secret time machine. =o!

[Films4You]

YouTube have even more stats about videos' now :)

Great !!!

[SSBRmaster]

at the starting u said it was the 28th of march 2008, and when u clicked on YouTube Insight, it said so too. How come it says your video was added on the 27th of march 2008? one day before the video was filmed.