Youtube views are dropping

PANIC

Yesterday ReelSEO posted a blog about the latest research from ComScore. To summarize the total views on Youtube have dropped steadily over the last few months to an incredible 16 billion views for April 2012. In January it peaked at 22 billion views.

Run for the hills ?  

What the research also highlighted was the minutes spent watching the films, in January 2012 74 billion minutes were spent watching films whereas by April 2012 this was 62 billion minutes.

Although the data reflects a drop, there is a subtext.

Check your Relative Audience Retention 

The sub text 

In April 2011 the average time spent watching a film was 3 minutes. By January 2012 this was 3.40 minutes but by April this had risen to 3.95 minutes  (I know, I know there are only 60 seconds in a minute but stick with me)! That's almost a whole minute in a year.

Your average viewer is finding relevant content quicker and engaging with it. 

The Absolute Audience Retention shows the % of total views
your film is getting. 

Let me translate

It's all about creating great content. This research enforces the fact that engagement overrides views and Google wants this. If someone engages with your film/channel they sell more adverts. Google can target specific adverts designed to fit that content. Simple. If someone clicks onto your heavily key worded but irrelevant film, doesn't engage with it and then comes away from it again then no-one benefits.

Ranking Update

To summarise the challenge - we have a film about knee pain which we are using to get this page on knee pain to rank higher. When we took control of the film it ranked 146th on Youtube - it now ranks 10th.