Audience retention

KantoGaming

KantoGaming

Loving YTtalk
im always getting comments saying that people love my videos/series but then my audience retention is never really that high under analytics.

I mean I do get numbers that watch the whole videos, but a good majority don't.

Should I focus on the analytics as much as I do? I don't get it
 
Retention is not as important as watchtime. As long as you're accruing watchtime then I wouldn't worry too much. Remember, it's better that someone watches 50% of a 20 minutes video than 70% of a 5 minute video.
 
Overall watch time is king, retention percentage is a good progress report for us to know what people like and what key elements made them taper off.
 
Watch time is where it's at. It feels like a lot of people on YouTube stumble around clicking on different videos and not finishing any of them. Advertising also plays a big part in the retention rate. If I use AdWords to push a video, I may get great view numbers, but the retention will probably be low because people clicked on it for no real reason.
 
KantoGaming said:
im always getting comments saying that people love my videos/series but then my audience retention is never really that high under analytics.

I mean I do get numbers that watch the whole videos, but a good majority don't.

Should I focus on the analytics as much as I do? I don't get it
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Do the people who comment have a channel themselves? If yes, 99% for sure they are S4S and just saying whatever to get you to like and subscribe to them.
If not, maybe they come only for a portion of your video? You should be able to see that in your retention overview where they watch and drop of.
 
Don't worry too much about retention. Look at it like this; someone watches 7 minutes out of your 10 minute video, that makes it 70% retention.. they leave a comment that you go to reply to on the video page when your notification directs you there. do you watch the entire video when you go to reply? most likely not, so that cuts it roughly in half.. now its 35% retention. someone with a laggy net connection refreshes the page 8 times hoping that it will fix his problem? Well your retention is cutting down and down and down each time.
So just focus on less chaotic things, like raw view count, and watch time.. ore so the watch time though.
 
If you want to increase retention, make things that are worth watching to the end. That sounds snarky, but it's not. A lot of fantastic videos are ones you can drop into and then go on your way, like some comedy videos (I can watch 5 minutes of an hour set of standup and be happy) or perhaps game play. But videos where you let the audience know that staying through the whole thing, that there are interesting bits throughout, and there's a final reveal can help with retention a lot.
 
IceTwig said:
Don't worry too much about retention. Look at it like this; someone watches 7 minutes out of your 10 minute video, that makes it 70% retention.. they leave a comment that you go to reply to on the video page when your notification directs you there. do you watch the entire video when you go to reply? most likely not, so that cuts it roughly in half.. now its 35% retention. someone with a laggy net connection refreshes the page 8 times hoping that it will fix his problem? Well your retention is cutting down and down and down each time.
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That's a very good point and I'd never thought of it like that.
There's usually a quick drop off in some of my vids when I have a brief intro sequence, and it looks like people skip past this - just might be worth pointing out. How you setup your vid at the beginning really makes a huge difference to how many people will be watching the whole thing.
 
My retention is around 20% but I still get views that add up to many hours of view time every day.
 
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