Earlier this year, YouTube rolled out YouTube Insight, an analytics program for videos that let users get a look into where and by whom videos were posted. They have launched a new feature of that service today, which allows you to actually pinpoint the specific parts of videos that get viewed the most. A post on the Official Google Blog explains:
This information is now available to all YouTube video uploaders with an innovative new feature for Insight called “Hot Spots.” The Hot Spots tab in Insight plays your video alongside a graph that shows the ups-and-downs of viewership at different moments within the video. We determine “hot” and “cold” spots by comparing your video’s abandonment rate at that moment to other videos on YouTube of the same length, and incorporating data about rewinds and fast-forwards. So what does that mean? Well, when the graph goes up, your video is hot: few viewers are leaving, and many are even rewinding on the control bar to see that sequence again. When the graph goes down, your content’s gone cold: many viewers are moving to another part of the video or leaving the video entirely.
They provide an example with a “Dancing with Soulja Boy” video:
I’m curious to see if this technology somehow finds its way into future video search projects from Google. Analyzing data based on frames throughout a video combined with the audio-based Gaudi project might make for some interesting results.
Philipp Lenssen noted a couple weeks ago when talk of “HotSpots” surfaced that advertising could be a factor as well. He quoted AdvertisingAge: “If you give users the tools to attract larger audiences, they’ll create more ad inventory.”
