March 26, 2008 11:09 PM PDT

YouTube stats revealed

by Harrison Hoffman
  • Font size
  • Print
  • Post a comment

YouTube has just announced the newest addition to its video service. It's called YouTube Insights and it allows content publishers, partners, and advertisers to see detailed statistical data for their videos. Metrics that the service provides include geographic viewing and relative popularity.


YouTube claims that this new service will allow you to determine trends in how long it takes for a video to become popular as well as what happens when they do become popular. Advantages vary for the different groups that will be using Insights. Creators will benefit from looking at viewing trends, partners can use the data to better understand their audience and become more profitable, and advertisers can tweak their marketing strategy based on past trends.

YouTube Insights provides in depth data in the form of graphs and maps.

There are, without a doubt, people who are going to benefit from the addition of this new service, but there is one thing we have to remember. Most of the people who are on YouTube are there to watch the videos, not to create them or advertise there, so the effect of this announcement will not be immediately apparent to most YouTube users.

With all of this in mind, I think that this is an interesting look at video trends, but I'm not convinced that this is a game changer. It may help us to better understand the life cycle of web videos, but I think that this will ultimately be a bigger deal for partners and advertisers than it will be for content creators.

You can get a look at this new service by going to Account > Videos, Favorites, & Playlists > and then clicking on "About this video" for the video that you want to analyze.

Harrison Hoffman is a tech enthusiast and co-founder of LiveSide.net, a blog about Windows Live. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Recent posts from The Web Services Report
Quark Promote lets novices make promo materials
Meebo Bar now available for all
YouTube shows what friends share on Facebook
Bitly.tv serves up the Web's most linked videos
Does Twitter mean business with 'Contributors' test?
Norton Online Backup 2.0 hits the Web
iTunes Rewind shows off best-selling content of 2009
Report: MySpace to adopt Facebook Connect
advertisement

15 sites that went kaput in 2009

Web sites launch all the time, but they also shut their doors. We highlight 15 that bit the dust this year.

Top 10 news stories of the decade

Let the debate begin: Was the iPhone more important than iTunes? Was anything bigger than Google finding a great business model? CNET offers its list of the 10 most important stories of the '00s.

About The Web Services Report

Harrison Hoffman is a tech enthusiast and co-founder of LiveSide.net, a blog about Windows Live. The Web Services Report covers news, opinions, and analysis on Web-based software from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and countless other companies in this rapidly expanding space. Hoffman currently attends the University of Miami, where he studies business and computer science.

Send Harrison an e-mail.
Follow Harrison on Twitter.
He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure

Add this feed to your online news reader

The Web Services Report topics

advertisement
advertisement

Inside CNET News

Scroll Left Scroll Right