Audience Retention

Elissa Jordan

Elissa Jordan

I've Got It
Hey! So, I have been noticing a trend on my videos. It's on my audience retention and it's where it steadily decreases pretty much till the end. Is this a good thing? I have a video that has 646 views and is one of my most popular videos, and it still does this. Is this good or bad? If bad, what can I do to fix it? Thanks! :)
 
Means people tend to turn off your video after watching it for a while. What percent is your audience retention?
 
Having audience retention go down during the video is normal, because nearly 100% of your viewers start watching your video at the beginning and then they may choose to stop watching, or skip at some point in the video. Of course it would be ideal to have everyone watch all your videos from beginning to end, but that is an unrealistic expectation, so most videos will show a gradual drop off. This drop off is a given, but it is also a tool. For instance it can help you identify weak spots in your videos and the relative quality of your video. For instance, if in a given video you see a sharp drop of after 1 minute you may want to look at your video and see what happens at that point in the video to understand what might turn away viewer. So you can possibly avoid it in the next video. It's also a good tool too see the relative quality of your video. For instance my very first video, which was pretty horrible, although I didn't know it at the time, is on average viewed for 20% of its total length and only 10% of the viewers watch the entire video. As I said there are several things wrong with it. But my most recent video is on average seen for 60% and about 40% of the viewer stick around till the end.


In general you should strive to keep all parts of the video engaging and interesting. It is also easier to keep an audience engaged for a short time than for a long time. Viewer retention is important because as far as I know it is also something that youtube looks at for ranking your videos in search results.
 
Yup, it's completely normal :)

Also @Kelkschiz that's really good advice - audience retention graphs can be really helpful to work out how people are interacting with your videos

Kelkschiz said:
This drop off is a given, but it is also a tool. For instance it can help you identify weak spots in your videos and the relative quality of your video.
Click to expand...
 
Elissa Jordan said:
Hey! So, I have been noticing a trend on my videos. It's on my audience retention and it's where it steadily decreases pretty much till the end. Is this a good thing? I have a video that has 646 views and is one of my most popular videos, and it still does this. Is this good or bad? If bad, what can I do to fix it? Thanks! :)
Click to expand...
If you find away to get 99% retention rate at the end of your video, you will be millionaire :D
 
Yup, completely normal. Here is what most of my videos look like:
aeee3504b33ffa6645ebf6cb140a1169.png
What truly matters is your average retention rate. Across all videos, my current average is 36%, though a year ago it was 27%. Steadily increasing!
e6be24c2ee7dbc56a22a833ab2e5b986.png
 
Would it be a good idea to use the audience retention chart to determine where to place annotations? I'm thinking to identify any major places where retention suddently drops and make sure that my card or annotation appears before that atleast viewers can see it.
 
PinProject said:
Would it be a good idea to use the audience retention chart to determine where to place annotations? I'm thinking to identify any major places where retention suddently drops and make sure that my card or annotation appears before that atleast viewers can see it.
Click to expand...

I think it's important to place annotation in the most relevant spot in the video. If the annotation has no relation to what is going on in the video at the time it appears, the appearance of the annotation may annoy the viewer and cause the viewer to stop viewing the video altogether. It's important that annotations improve the viewing experience.
 
I am still kind of confused about the whole audience retention thing if you already have an audience like the Game Grumps or any other massive YouTube channel I don't think it matters...
 
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