Up until today, people who uploaded videos to YouTube could only get limited statistics and information about the people who were viewing that content.
This included number of viewers, viewers ratings, and the number of comments left on that video. Now, through a new feature called YouTube Insight, content creators can get a whole lot more detailed stats than that.
YouTube Insight
YouTube Insight is free, and available to anyone with a YouTube account who uploads a video to the site, allowing them to view a diverse range of facts and videos about their audience.
These include how often any particular video is viewed from different geographical location, and how long it takes for a video to become popular or even go viral.
Content creators will basically have at their fingertips the means to accurately determine which part of the world is interested in their video, and how that affects popularity worldwide.
Accessing The Statistics
To access the statistics, just click on the ‘About this Video’ button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.
So what exactly could these metrics do for content creators and the future of YouTube as a whole?
While the more casual users of YouTube may find the whole thing unnecessary and over the top, advertisers and marketers are sure to find them an invaluable tool.
Uses For Insight
The New York Times offers several possibilities how YouTube Insight could be used:
“A movie studio might run several versions of a trailer to see what is catching on where.”
“A political campaign could test spots of a candidate discussing the environment or the economy; if an environmental spot is popular in Pennsylvania, that might help decide what the candidate stumps about there.”
“During a YouTube test of the feature, a band uploaded its music performances, determined which states it was popular in via Insight, and planned a tour around that.”
Conclusions
While announcing the stats package, Tracey Chan on the Official Google Blog stated that “Insight turns YouTube into one of the world’s largest focus groups,” and I can’t disagree.
If you think YouTube has already done everything it could with Web video, this latest package, sure to be the first of many, just proves that they haven’t even started mining the depths of what is possible.
