Watch time vs video length

adams eats

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One of my viewers left a really nice comment on one of my videos about a week ago. They were advising I shorten my videos and cut out some of the crap so I get to the point more. which I agreed with. Then I started looking at the way youtube works now, and it all being about watch time! so I'm sort of confused what I should be doing really. older videos were nearly always over 10 minutes, but my newer ones are between 5-8 minutes for a recipe. I keep hearing that youtube wants longer videos but I don't want to fill out my videos with fluff because my viewers don't actually want that. #confused
 

Sin B

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Well 10 minutes algorithmically speaking isn't the magic number anyways otherwise a lot of gaming channels would be top left right and center wherever you look in terms of trending suggestions and whatnot. As far as length goes it seems to be more in the 30+ minutes range roughly speaking.


If your type of content doesn't fit longer videos then don't worry too much about it, keep it clean with proper lengths. If you really want to make it longer but not as a requirement to watch do Normal video X minutes, finish video off with your outro and then just slam in some bloopers from recording and done, video is longer but people don't have to watch it.
 

adams eats

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Well 10 minutes algorithmically speaking isn't the magic number anyways otherwise a lot of gaming channels would be top left right and center wherever you look in terms of trending suggestions and whatnot. As far as length goes it seems to be more in the 30+ minutes range roughly speaking.


If your type of content doesn't fit longer videos then don't worry too much about it, keep it clean with proper lengths. If you really want to make it longer but not as a requirement to watch do Normal video X minutes, finish video off with your outro and then just slam in some bloopers from recording and done, video is longer but people don't have to watch it.
Thanks for the input mate. Appreciate it.
 

TheSwedishTraveler

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Well, watch time seems important, but if people are thrown off by seeing the length of it and go before seeing the whole video, there´s hard to balance that!
 
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Dave B

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Hey there,

I think the main attraction for the whole 10min+ situation is that it allows you to place video ads at the start and end of your video along with the banner ads throughout. These video ads seem to be where the big bucks are at if you are making good AdSense money.

I would recommend focusing on creating your videos to whatever amount of time you feel gives the best viewing experience. I would also utilise other Social Media platforms, for example, 60-90 second food videos do very well on Facebook. Once you are creating value for your community across a diverse range of platforms it means you are not relying on YouTube and will also give you the opportunity to sell your own product eg. a cookery lesson/recipe book etc. This means you will get much more revenue per 1000 views instead of relying on AdSense alone.

Finally, I would ensure you have a good playlist strategy to compliment your content as this will increase you Session Watch Time.

I hope this helps.
 
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adams eats

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Hey there,

I think the main attraction for the whole 10min+ situation is that it allows you to place video ads at the start and end of your video along with the banner ads throughout. These video ads seem to be where the big bucks are at if you are making good AdSense money.

I would recommend focusing on creating your videos to whatever amount of time you feel gives the best viewing experience. I would also utilise other Social Media platforms, for example, 60-90 second food videos do very well on Facebook. Once you are creating value for your community across a diverse range of platforms it means you are not relying on YouTube and will also give you the opportunity to sell your own product eg. a cookery lesson/recipe book etc. This means you will get much more revenue per 1000 views instead of relying on AdSense alone.

Finally, I would ensure you have a good playlist strategy to compliment your content as this will increase you Session Watch Time.

I hope this helps.
Thanks for the tips! ☺