YouTube to collect user data

YouTube, the Internet's No. 1 video warehouse, is gearing up to collect user data that could prove valuable to marketers, according to the company's chief marketing officer.

Suzie Reider, YouTube's chief marketing officer, told an audience at the Advertising Research Foundation's Rethink conference this week that YouTube will launch in a few weeks its first user study, according to trade publication Advertising Age.

"By Q3, we'll have a tremendous amount of metrics and data around every video," Reider told the audience. "There's lots you can glean from looking at who's looking at what. It's a real-time focus group that happens all day, every day."

More than 34 million U.S. residents visit YouTube each month, according to ComScore Networks.