YouTube has continuously been improving its video analytics program YouTube Insight since its launch last year.
“Whether you want to know how old your audience is, how many times your most-viewed video was rated last week, or which minute of your clip is most engaging, YouTube Insight can give you the answer. As we add functionality, we’re careful to preserve YouTube Insight’s clean and easy-to-use look and feel,” says YouTube.
Last month, YouTube Insight got more focused on how viewers interact with videos. They added a community tab, which lets you view numbers related to ratings, comments, favorites, or all three.
Now you can take any information obtained through YouTube Insight a step further. A YouTube spokesperson tells murdok that they have added a feature that lets you export information as a CSV file, which means you can open it up in Google Docs, Microsoft Excel, or other spreadsheet programs.
“It basically means that from now on there is no limit to what users can do with their data!” the spokesperson says.
Examples YouTube gives of ways that this new feature might be useful include comparing view counts for different videos side by side, mapping out where viewers are coming from over time, or comparing discovery sources by country. Some others the spokesperson shared include:
– Combine data from all your Channels: That way, you can see how your content as a whole is doing on YouTube. This is especially useful for big partners with thousands of Channels.
– Combine data from a subset or videos or Channels: Let’s say that half of your Channels (or half of your videos) have a different host from the other half, but similar content. Now you can find out which host works best for the YouTube community.
– TV and YouTube: Let’s say you get reports on your TV performance. Now you can combine YouTube and TV data to estimate how many people are watching your content as a whole and what demographic they belong to.
– Discovery: Before, you could see whether YouTube Search or embedding drives most traffic. But what if you want to see whether the #2 search term drives more traffic than the top embed? Exporting your data allows you to do that.
As online video popularity continues to grow both in terms of content and advertising, video analytics are going to become increasingly important for getting the most out of your videos. The more freedom you have to analyze your data, the better chance you’re going to have of improving performance.
