Google gives partners analytics on YouTube pages

Google is giving brands and content publishers another way to track YouTube viewership metrics by letting them view it inside of Google Analytics.

Brands can now keep an eye on information that had not previously been available through YouTube's built-in Insight analytics system, including bounce rates, page views, stay time, and whether certain users are coming back for more.

It also takes the same geographic information that's been available in Insight, and lets you fine-tune it within the Google Analytics maps overlay, which includes additional filtering tools that can narrow down results by segment. Brand owners are also able to compare these numbers to existing goals from benchmarks or advertising campaigns.

Google is pitching this as an easy way for companies to use the popular video service as a big focus group, which is a fair statement. Commercials or other promotional content can be watched repeatedly and at any hour of the day. Users are also able to rate the video and leave feedback, either in the comments or by private message.

Compared to having advertising on a Web site, or more traditional media like TV and radio, this gives the ad more of a "long tail." More importantly, by giving these brands a way to access more of the information than they could on YouTube alone, it's a very casual approach to getting them to start using its analytics service; something that can be a gateway toward using Google's AdWords program.