by Alecia Wright

Understanding online video analytics is absolutely crucial to video marketing today and going forward. The popularity of YouTube is unparalleled, akin to the successes of Google (YouTube’s parent company) and Facebook.  Nowadays YouTube and Facebook are going head-to-head in the terms of online video views: in August 2014, Facebook for the first time surpassed YouTube in terms of desktop video views in a month.  While YouTube maintains a healthy lead over Facebook in terms of video content uploaded, Facebook is growing in this area while YouTube is not.  Google is obviously the  #1 search engine, but YouTube is the second largest search vehicle with over 3 billion search queries per month.  Of course, Google owns YouTube as one of its subsidiaries, so both companies are dominating the online video market.  (See our previous blog post for a further comparison: Google vs. Facebook “Online Ads War”).

When posting your videos on the Internet, its important to remember that it is not just about total views.  More importantly, you need to understand your audience on each platform.  In this way, you can see how your viewers are engaging in order to understand what content they want to see, make more of that content, and create a positive feedback loop.

YouTube Video Analytics

Constant Contact wrote a helpful blog post giving a detailed overview of how YouTube Analytics works, as summarized below:

Logging into your YouTube account, choosing Analytics from the menu allows you to see a clear and concise snapshot of your channel’s performance. The Overview tool allows you to see a comprehensive breakdown report of your analytics, such as Performance, Engagement, or subscriber Demographics.  Here is an example from YouTube:

The Views report visually breaks down total views, collective number of minutes watched, and average view duration:

  • Average View Duration (about 1 minute for each video above) is helpful because based on that average, you can tailor your videos to that ideal length to maintain your viewers’ attention.

  • The Demographics tool is helpful to determine whether you’re reaching your intended target audience.

  • Traffic Sources is another beneficial tool that shows where your viewers come from: YouTube search, suggested videos, playlists, etc.
  • The Devices tool shows you on which device or operating system people view your videos: computer, mobile, or tablet?
  • Audience Retention: On average, at what point do people click out of your video?

Engagements Report

  • Subscribers, likes and dislikes, favorites, comments
  • *Sharing: How many times has your video been shared, and on which social network?*

Pros and Cons of YouTube:

Pros:

  • Popularity
  • Completely free
  • Searchable (YouTube results show up at the top of Google searches)
  • Easy integration with websites

Cons:

  • Advertisements
  • Lack of customization
  • “Trolls” who write negative comments and give dislikes

Below  is a snapshot of how Matchnode uses YouTube Analytics for one of our clients.  The top video “An Online Acting Workshop” clearly outperformed the second video “Connect with the A-List,” with double the view rate.  When we saw this disparity in view results, we adjusted the wording of the title and description.  It seems “an online workshop” is more effective phrasing than “connect with celebs,” perhaps due to the attainable/educational aspect.

Overall, YouTube Analytics is a great source to decide which types of videos to focus on creating based on the data engagement.  Content creation (especially video) is resource-intensive; therefore, analyzing data from your old videos can help you make intelligent decisions about making future videos that are more likely to get traction.

Facebook Video Analytics:

 Facebook is the world’s most popular social media giant, with 1.19 billion active monthly users.  In order to maintain a competitive edge, Facebook is constantly innovating, whether by dominating mobile when post-IPO it was called a weakness, or now with greatly increased focus on video.  It also looks at what its competitors (Google above all) are doing well: and YouTube does video analytics exceptionally well.  In May 2014, Facebook launched Facebook Video Analytics to encourage brands to upload videos to their site.  Prior to that launch, Facebook’s video metrics were limited.

 Now, Facebook Video Analytics offers an in-depth visual report.  The ‘Facebook for Business’ video metrics website gives an example of how this works:

  • Average Duration of Video Viewed (%)
    • 12 seconds (79% of total video)
  • Total # of Video Views (for 3 seconds or longer):
    • 16,626
    • # Organic views vs. # Paid views
      • 12,861 Organic vs. 3,765 Paid
  • # of Unique views (16,626 Total views includes same person watching more than once)
    • 13,706
  • Video Views up to 95%:
    • 7,740
    • Note that only 50% of people who started watching this video (16,626) nearly finished

Page Insights View:

  • Audience Retention Graphs: Points of interest, where interest wanes
  • # of views reaching 25%, 50%, 75%, 95%, 100% of video
  • How video is performing & where to place key messages

According to YouTube,  interest typically wanes after the first 15 seconds of a video.

Ads Reporting View:

  • Data Breakdown: Target specific demographics
    • How specific demographics respond to your video based on selected category
      • Age
      • Gender
      • Age and Gender
      • Country
  • Cost Per Video View: average cost per view of video ads

Pros and Cons of Facebook Videos

Pros

  • Publish to target a specific audience
  • Typically higher engagement than YouTube (auto-play on newsfeed)
  • Interactivity of comments
    • Can tag people and friends in the video so they get a notification and can then view

Cons

  • Facebook videos can only be viewed when logged into Facebook
  • Limited SEO benefits compared to YouTube

Overall, Facebook’s video metrics offer valuable insights regarding advertisers’ videos perform and ways in which to improve.  Note, however, that the video must be uploaded directly to Facebook, not embedded from another platform.  This has been Facebook’s shortcut to beat YouTube in terms of videos viewed monthly: auto-play in the Newsfeed counts as views.  (Talk about a shot across Google’s bow!).  YouTube used to be easily integrated into Facebook, but it split views.  Facebook explicitly requests you upload directly onto Facebook (rather than promoting a YouTube video on Facebook) and directly states you’ll get a lower cost per view.

Is there a Clear Winner?

Because YouTube’s entire business model is videos, it provides exceptional quality and will clearly have the most advanced metrics.  Pitting YouTube vs. Facebook as premier online video platforms depends on the nature of the advertisers/marketers’ businesses.  For example, a company might fare better on YouTube if it is mostly video-based, whereas Facebook is more socially connected.

In conclusion, the online video analytic industry is booming, and marketers need the right tools to understand and make appropriate business decisions based on the data.  What makes online video analytics so valuable is its visual breakdown of which specific metrics are working well and which are not, so you can adjust and create better videos based on these insights.  Using these analytics resources, you can apply these tips to future videos for growth with specific, actionable steps.

Overall YouTube and Facebook offer robust video metric analytics for marketers based on their respective strengths. It all depends on video goals and budget. Hopefully this article offered valuable insights for improving your own analytics.  In our next blog, we will look at players in the social video space: Vimeo, Instagram, Snapchat, and more.  Thanks for reading!