Extremely short videos. Any problem with watch time?

JayManOurMusicBox

JayManOurMusicBox

Loving YTtalk
I will be posting some intro music that are about 3 to 15 seconds long.
This means these videos are super short.
Will I have any issues with watch time? I understand if people watch longer means it is better and YouTube drives more traffic to them. My question is if it is a matter of finishing the video or longer watch minutes?

On the other hand, I am afraid that due to many of these short videos, it may pull down the watch time of my overall channel with my longer play music. If so, is it better for me to place these short videos on a different channel, separating them from my main tracks?

Anyone knows?
 
No one knows exactly how the algorithm works but from what I've heard, a video's ranking is based on its own performance, including session watch time. So if people watch all of your short videos fully and then continue to watch, it may be better than one long video with bad retention.
 
SabrinaKom said:
No one knows exactly how the algorithm works but from what I've heard, a video's ranking is based on its own performance, including session watch time. So if people watch all of your short videos fully and then continue to watch, it may be better than one long video with bad retention.
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Thanks Sabrina. I guess I am not a typical YouTuber and people go thru my music and skip if they don't it is the right track for them and move on to the next. In that sense retention is pretty bad. I am really torn if I should open a new channel or merge everything into one
 
Well the video in my signature down there is 18 seconds long and I think if you search "tanuki balls" on youtube, it should still be in the first page of search, so it can still hold its worth in searches (even being short).

But the only thing about that video is that I'm not suggested much (around 5 videos), even with a retention of 90-120%. Though people kept using it in blogs and such. :confused:

Then I have 2 videos on my main channel under 30 seconds. It's not that popular since they're announcements. In the long run it doesn't effect my retention because other videos are watched more. But there were a bit of a dip to my overall retention for the day I first uploaded them because of views from subscribers. 30 seconds is very short compared to my normal videos.

BUT even with them being short, they are still suggested to my own videos so... It's your call?

This is just my observations to my short videos. Also, these 2 are not in searches because of their generic titles.
 
SabrinaKom said:
No one knows exactly how the algorithm works but from what I've heard, a video's ranking is based on its own performance, including session watch time. So if people watch all of your short videos fully and then continue to watch, it may be better than one long video with bad retention.
Click to expand...

Thanks so much Sabrina. I am taking time to digest all these. I want to make the right decision from the start.[DOUBLEPOST=1454241052,1454240872][/DOUBLEPOST]
wasabiroots said:
Well the video in my signature down there is 18 seconds long and I think if you search "tanuki balls" on youtube, it should still be in the first page of search, so it can still hold its worth in searches (even being short).

But the only thing about that video is that I'm not suggested much (around 5 videos), even with a retention of 90-120%. Though people kept using it in blogs and such. :confused:

Then I have 2 videos on my main channel under 30 seconds. It's not that popular since they're announcements. In the long run it doesn't effect my retention because other videos are watched more. But there were a bit of a dip to my overall retention for the day I first uploaded them because of views from subscribers. 30 seconds is very short compared to my normal videos.

BUT even with them being short, they are still suggested to my own videos so... It's your call?

This is just my observations to my short videos. Also, these 2 are not in searches because of their generic titles.
Click to expand...


I have both over 3 minutes videos and these 5 to 15 second videos. I don't know how they will all even out.
Does that mean they match against total view time for your own channel? As you mentioned there was a dip in retention on the day you uploaded your short video.
 
JayManOurMusicBox said:
I have both over 3 minutes videos and these 5 to 15 second videos. I don't know how they will all even out.
Does that mean they match against total view time for your own channel? As you mentioned there was a dip in retention on the day you uploaded your short video.
Click to expand...
This is all just my assumption and understanding from reading literally everywhere, but it could be wrong:

What I think youtube kept saying is that:

6 videos of length 10 seconds(100% retention) is equals to 1 video of 1 minute(100% retention) equals to 1 video of 2 minutes(50%retention) equals to 1 video of 10 minutes(1% retention) when it comes to watch time. Which means 1 minute watch time is 1 minute watch time, so it doesn't matter how long your videos are. (keep in mind that audience retention is not watch time)

Now, what matters is how long a viewer stays in youtube for and how long a viewer stays in your channel. This is what people call "session watch time" (which we have no way of knowing). But what we know is that the longer they stay in your own channel, the more total watch time and session watch time you get for your channel.

So you want them to stay in your channel longer. If you think shorter videos would get people to click on more of your videos and watch them, then do that. If you think people would watch longer videos and would click on more of your other videos and watch them, then do that instead.

I'm sorry if I got you confused but that's how my brain works haha~~ read it a couple of times and you'd probably get it. :p
Good luck!

Also, I checked the dip I mentioned before. The total watch time for that day was not bad at all, the dip was just because of the short video. So what matters more is individual video's audience percentage retention rather than the total retention.
 
wasabiroots' comment fits with my understanding of how things work (except I think her 10 minute video would need 10% retention, not 1% retention ;) )

Bouncing off what she said, technically if you wanted to increase session watch time of short videos, then you'd look at things like: how can I encourage people to watch more of my short videos. For example, can your short videos be strung together in a playlist? (It looks like you're already using playlists for different moods...but you'd want to beef up the descriptions and other SEO for these playlists so that they are more discoverable in search) If so, is it likely that someone watching in a playlist would go from one song to another, or would they generally not watch through.

For example, I know there are playlists for things like "relaxing music for studying" where the people who are searching for this content would just watch this playlist for as long as they need to. So that's a gold mine of session watch time.

You'd want to see if you can do something like that.

Alternatively, what if you included shorter songs together in one video, but then had annotations or time markings so people could go between. (Contrast: an artist who posts an album as separate songs but then includes them in one playlist...or an artist that posts the entire album as one video but then has an index where you can skip between songs.)

Overall, I think that Youtube implicitly prioritizes certain content over others. For example, I think it's easier for a let's Player or a vlogger and have videos that are longer (even if they have shorter retention). But for musicians and animators, it's not so easy to just create a longer video, so we have to just deal with that.
 
I have shorter vids, 80+% retention,
I think there are of course issues with the algorithm, as it really does favour longer content BUT with the bigger picture I can see it's fair, fair to about 97% of creators, so YouTube will never be able to get much better.
YouTube red earnings however are entirely paid by watchtime. So if someone watched my entire channel, then 2 30min vids from someone else, I'd have a total of 4%or so, watch time in comparison. Now multiply that with 30 more long form creators and yea...

I would put 3 intros in one vid with links in desc.
 
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