Audience Retention. What do you aim for?

xxheathermarie

I've Got It
I've always been curious what other people strive for with their audience retention. Obviously 100% is the best, but thats not realistic.

So what to you guys strive for? If I see above 50% I'm happy. 70% is my highest and 30% is my lowest (<-- lol I hate that video too so I cannot blame people for clicking off. Don't film vlogs with go pros haha).

Not sure if this is a good or bad retention, but it does give me room to improve!
 
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I've always been curious what other people strive for with their audience retention. Obviously 100% is the best, but thats not realistic.

So what to you guys strive for? If I see above 50% I'm happy. 70% is my highest and 30% is my lowest (<-- lol I hate that video too so I cannot blame people for clicking off. Don't film vlogs with go pros haha).

Not sure if this is a good or bad retention, but it does give me room to improve!
I have one video with over 100k views that still has a 97% retention rate. This video also made it onto Fox on TV. I see one that is a longer video that only has 22%. My shorter videos seem to be the best when it comes to likes and retention and views.
 
I have one video with over 100k views that still has a 97% retention rate. This video also made it onto Fox on TV. I see one that is a longer video that only has 22%. My shorter videos seem to be the best when it comes to likes and retention and views.
WOW 97% !!! Thats insane. Congrats.
 
Retention is valued by YouTube as a function of video length. It is one of the criteria used by YouTube to decide if a video will be promoted or not. My recent videos are between 10-15 minutes long, and 50%+ retention on these is what I aim for. Anything less is not ideal. My 3-5 minute videos all have over 75%+ retention, and even those statistics aren't enough to hit the 100k view margins, so I'm assuming I'd need 80%, or even 90% for a 5 minute video for it to be worthy.
 
Retention is valued by YouTube as a function of video length. It is one of the criteria used by YouTube to decide if a video will be promoted or not. My recent videos are between 10-15 minutes long, and 50%+ retention on these is what I aim for. Anything less is not ideal. My 3-5 minute videos all have over 75%+ retention, and even those statistics aren't enough to hit the 100k view margins, so I'm assuming I'd need 80%, or even 90% for a 5 minute video for it to be worthy.
It doesn't need 80% retention to hit 100k. One video I have that is above 50k has 40% retention. When I look at the chart it shows that everyone skipped my into and dropped off when the tutorial was done. I learned from that. But I'm still on the first page when you search for that tutorial. So the retention was bad... but doesn't mean it wasn't enough to get a large audience.

So do you strive for 80% then?
 
It doesn't need 80% retention to hit 100k. One video I have that is above 50k has 40% retention. When I look at the chart it shows that everyone skipped my into and dropped off when the tutorial was done. I learned from that. But I'm still on the first page when you search for that tutorial. So the retention was bad... but doesn't mean it wasn't enough to get a large audience.

So do you strive for 80% then?
It does need around 80% if you want to hit 100k through YouTube promotion. Your video may have done it through search or external, which is possible. Also, it looks like it's around 68k, so you're doing pretty well. But once again, it's taken almost 2 years to hit this number, this isn't what I meant.

What I mean is, the way to get a lot of views naturally is by YouTube promotion. You can hit 100k this way in around a single month (or faster if your video is better). This is what I mean. But, you also need high session time combined, which isn't shown in analytics.
 
It does need around 80% if you want to hit 100k through YouTube promotion. Your video may have done it through search or external, which is possible. Also, it looks like it's around 68k, so you're doing pretty well. But once again, it's taken almost 2 years to hit this number, this isn't what I meant.

What I mean is, the way to get a lot of views naturally is by YouTube promotion. You can hit 100k this way in around a single month (or faster if your video is better). This is what I mean. But, you also need high session time combined, which isn't shown in analytics.
I wouldn't say it has to be. I have some videos featured that hovered around 65-70%. Retention is one of many factors that is taken into account. Engagement, suggested clicks, likes, and shares also play a role. Having high retention is great, but engagement seems much more valuable overall.

BTW, 50% retention for 10-15min video is pretty impressive. I'm certain even levels like that can drive a feature. Of course, there's no guarantee.
 
It does need around 80% if you want to hit 100k through YouTube promotion. Your video may have done it through search or external, which is possible. Also, it looks like it's around 68k, so you're doing pretty well. But once again, it's taken almost 2 years to hit this number, this isn't what I meant.

What I mean is, the way to get a lot of views naturally is by YouTube promotion. You can hit 100k this way in around a single month (or faster if your video is better). This is what I mean. But, you also need high session time combined, which isn't shown in analytics.
Okay makes sense. I see a lot of your videos have high views. Would you say majority have high retention? If so any suggestions on keeping the retention about say 70% (something I haven't really achieved much of).

I wouldn't say it has to be. I have some videos featured that hovered around 65-70%. Retention is one of many factors that is taken into account. Engagement, suggested clicks, likes, and shares also play a role. Having high retention is great, but engagement seems much more valuable overall.

BTW, 50% retention for 10-15min video is pretty impressive. I'm certain even levels like that can drive a feature. Of course, there's no guarantee.

Any suggestions on how to get the audience to engage more besides a point of action? Asking them is one thing, but how do you get them to DO it?
 
I've moved your thread to the strategy forum.

I aim for above average / high in the relative retention section, particularly the first 20 seconds.
 
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