Strategically using Interactive Cards to boost Audience Retention

[PositivelyBrainwashed]

In general having an audience retention of at least 35%-40% in videos means you're doing well. I've been looking at my audience retention for all my videos, and a week ago I've strategically started placing interactive cards about 10-15 seconds right before the average person would quit my video.

I made my interactive card teaser display, "Get the Free Ebook!" This has helped increase the audience retention for many of my old videos and increase the number of downloads for my Ebook. It was kinda silly for me to put the card after where more than half of my users have quit already. Now what's the advantage of increasing audience retention? Well Youtube's SEO and where your videos rank are highly influenced by audience retention and watch time. I was able to raise the rankings of old videos by just using this method.

Now you don't have to put an Ebook as part of your interactive cards. You can put a link to your website, products or merchandises, put a poll, or link to another video/playlist. I prefer linking to your website cuz you can edit the teaser text that pops up, while linking to videos/playlists will just display the title

 

[GamingRack]

offering people free stuff just to stay is pretty bad haha.

 

[Redford1900]

Thanks for the insight and thank you for your other thoughtful comments on other threads. It's been great having your perspective on different topics.

 

[darkstarmedia]

I love those little iCards! They're so useful and easy to sort out.
I always have one within the first 30 seconds - often linking to the playlist of the series they're on, unless there's a particular video that fits.

 

[Political Junkie News]

Just to let you know, using cards to leave links that lead outside youtube will hurt you.
Youtube monitors a viewer's session time (the total time someone watched your video+other youtube videos thereafter), and gives benefits to channels/ videos that lead to greater overall watch time.
If your viewers click your cards and leave for another website, it will be to your detriment.
So use annotations like you described, but link them to other video content.

 

[PositivelyBrainwashed]

Just to let you know, using cards to leave links that lead outside youtube will hurt you.
Youtube monitors a viewer's session time (the total time someone watched your video+other youtube videos thereafter), and gives benefits to channels/ videos that lead to greater overall watch time.
If your viewers click your cards and leave for another website, it will be to your detriment.
So use annotations like you described, but link them to other video content.

I'm aware of that. But my link leads to my website that gets people to sign up to my mailing list and get my Free-Ebook, both which drives more traffic and sales back to my channel. They're not gonna click the "Get The Free Ebook" card again the next time around. So the overall long term benefit is worth it. And as I have mentioned, it actually increased viewer time. So I'm guessing the people who are enjoying the video just ignore the card and keep watching.

 

[BobTheWizard]

I think that that is a very good idea to increase your audience retention and SEO

 

[Idec Sdawkminn]

I use featured videos that put a little thing at the bottom of each of my videos that recommends the current featured video. I set this at the time of when my videos get 50% retention rate. I don't use any cards or annotations because the featured video popup only shows up on videos that don't have those.

 

[PositivelyBrainwashed]

I use featured videos that put a little thing at the bottom of each of my videos that recommends the current featured video. I set this at the time of when my videos get 50% retention rate. I don't use any cards or annotations because the featured video popup only shows up on videos that don't have those.

Good to know that. Is there anyway to tract in the analytics how often people actually click the featured videos? My main problem with featured videos is that not all my videos have the same length so I just put them in the last 15 seconds. But I'll have to play around and think carefully which videos I want to put cards or not.

 

[ChrisLegend]

This is actually a really good idea man. Even if they don't click on it, something coming into the screen shows them that you are willing to put in the effort to make that happen which they will appreciate and offering a free eBook is good value. Will incorporate this into my video somehow, thank you.