Featured video or Cards? Which is better?

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Hi guys, i am curious to know which one is better? Featured video or cards? I know that if you use cards the featured video will not work but to me the cards are just like a small text advertisement on the top right most that pops out from your screen. On the other hand the featured video once setup it will show at the assigned time and a thumbnail will be shown of your feature video, playlist or latest video. Which one really works well to keep your audience stay in your channel and watch more of your videos?
 

JRTrax

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Do you have to use one or the other?
 
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I still dont know. Maybe if you guys can give me an advice which is better and would benefit a lot to make your viewers stay longer I will really appreciate it.

Though honestly as of the moment I am using the cards and I checked its analytics it is really not helping that much. So that is how the featured video came up to my mind of that could be better instead of the cards...
 

PositivelyBrainwashed

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As far as I know you can only use one or the other. I prefer the cards, as I can look at the audience retention of my videos, and then strategically place cards right before they tend to leave. Also thanks, you reminded me to place some arrows on the top right of my videos to better emphasize my cards.
 
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I see. I am just new so i guess my video content is not good enough because my viewers average viewing is at 1min and 20 sec. so should i put my cards before that time?
 

SweetDaddyBrown

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I tend to put my cards a few seconds after the beginning of the video, granted it's playlist/video links so I'm not sure how you'd go about for a different type of card. Putting them before the average viewing sounds like a good choice since you'll have a higher chance of getting them clicked.
 
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Thank you everyone for the advice. I will keep using the cards for now. One more thing how many cards is ideal to put in one video? Is it ok to max the 5 cards?
 

SweetDaddyBrown

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I stick to just 3 cards since you can see all of them without having to scroll down after clicking the icon. In the end it's just a matter of preference though.
 
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i see. Right now we are using 5, maybe we should look into this. Maybe the viewers is annoyed having too many pop up cards on their screen :crying:. Our views dramatically dropped after Christmas so we are trying to figure out what is going on.