Why Watch time is more important than views!

[Trudrknight]

I thought I would take a little information from it and share with you! Ill make this super short and hopefully easy for everyone to understand.

• Back in the day youtube used to value VIEWS more than WATCHTIME
• They soon found out that just because you had a lot of views didn't mean your content was good or didn't mean that advertisers would pay to advertise on your video
• They found out that advertisers cared more about the "engaged viewer"
• Youtube then changed how their search engine operated and how their recommended videos were generated
• This made WATCHTIME>VIEWS
• Some people are still under the belief that VIEWS is what is important
• This causes small channel's to start "SUB for SUB" in order to increase their views and subscribers on their videos
• However, they damage their videos because youtube sees that their people are going in and out of their videos and watching for only 25 seconds or less when they subscribe
• This makes youtube believe your video is not worth being on the top of the search or recommended videos
• When you force people to sub they don't come back, so although you have 2000 subscribers, your videos fail to even generate over 30 views or even generate substantial watchtime minutes.
• Your videos will never be found by youtube search and youll continue to work harder than you need to to market your videos
• In order to fix this awful trend that is killing our small channel community, we need to
  • Be thankful for the amount of subscribers we have
  • Stop trying to market and work on the subscribers we have to increase their watch time
  • Once our loyal subs are watching then start marketing cause your videos will be higher in the search
  • Don't force people to subscribe to you because you subbed to them
  • If they like your content they will subscribe

Any thoughts ???

 

[Lcosh]

deleted

 

[rmenga4]

It depends on the viewer if Watch time is important to them.

 

[Justine]

• Be thankful for the amount of subscribers we have
• Stop trying to market and work on the subscribers we have to increase their watch time
• Once our loyal subs are watching then start marketing cause your videos will be higher in the search
• Don't force people to subscribe to you because you subbed to them
• If they like your content they will subscribe

Honestly, that's what people need to keep in mind regardless of how many subscribers they have! ESPECIALLY the whole loyal subs part.

 

[JenPirante]

I can see the argument here. I usually watch the entire video... but then again... I'm usually watching videos I have outright searched for and intended to watch. It's rare that I watch a video randomly. It's usually by recommendation from another channel.

 

[Ghoti]

Another thing to take into account is a viewer who watches a full video in batches (the first 10 mins one day, the rest on the following day).

 

[Aegislasher]

yeah i really get that. I normally watch videos all the way, but there are times when I watch a couple of minutes then bail.

 

[Selim Keles]

it really depends on the video i find if its a list video i watch it all or countdown i watch it all but with other types i watch about half of it

 

[MiketheDbacker26]

I feel like this has been pretty well-established for a while now. I personally have absolutely no problem with it, because sub4sub is a problem, and people love to get that subscriber number up to raise their view count. So I personally enjoy this, the reality is if your channel is small enough to where people looking to just get subs is really hurting your view time, you probably don't deserve to be at the top of the search results.

 

[Trudrknight]

For most of us when we search on YouTube we are searching for something specific and when we find it we watch the entire video...normally we watch the first few that pop close to the top...however normally those are big name channels with a lot of subs.

So how does a small channel pop up on the top of that search ...it doesn't, unless it's something super specific to what you are searching... It's a tough game but us smaller channels have to understand that we need to eat the scraps that the big fish aren't eating until we are fat enough and big enough to fight those other big fish...if that analogy makes sense lol