YouTube Insights, YouTube’s version of analytics, is a wealth of information to content creators who want to know who watches the creator’s videos, how time people spend watching the videos compared to other videos of similar length, and even tells you where the viewers are coming from.
When Valve’s Left 4 Dead was released in November, 2008, I began recording gameplay and uploading select parts to YouTube. One of the very first videos I uploaded that month was titled “Oh look, a witch.” Since then, I’ve been amazed at how much traffic that one video has generated. In the period of November 28th, 2008 to April 10th, 2009, the video accounts for 15% of my total viewership.
It’s quite astounding considering how boring the video was. I wasn’t quite sure WHY so many people would want to see that video. Were they finding it by looking at my past videos? Did it show up in searches? The answer was provided to be in the “Discovery” tab.
83% of my viewers came from related videos
The videos that are related
From what I can tell, most of the other related videos were uploaded around the same day as my “Oh Look a Witch” video. During that period, there were few left 4 dead videos and the only videos out on YouTube were the trailers, intro to the game, and some gameplay from betas earlier on. My guess is that being one of the few videos that contained gameplay from the full game, people were interested in seeing how the game looks and plays like.
A look at the view counts shows that one of the highest peak is right before Christmas. Right when people would be getting their presents and are anticipating the Left 4 Dead surprise.
I get another high peak around the time that Valve offers the 50% off sale for Left 4 Dead in February. Could the release and sales of games have an impact on YouTube viewership? Are the sudden spikes due to people wanting to find out more about the game before they buy it? I know from my own experience, I always look on YouTube to look at how the game is played before I even look at reviews for the game. If I like what I see, I go on to read the reviews and then decide if I want to purchase the game or not. Perhaps this is the same for the other YouTube viewers? Maybe publishers should start advertising more on video websites like YouTube to capitalize on the fact that people will be looking to these sites for more information about the publisher’s game.
Countries that viewed my video
Hotspots compare viewership for each moment in video
The great thing about the Hot Spots tab in YouTube Insights that it compares when viewers leave your videos compared to other videos of similar lengths. From the “Oh it’s a witch” video, I can see that the moments leading up to the elevator, I’m losing viewers, but once I start attacking the witch, the viewers stay on until the witch dies and it lowers off again. The ending peak is due to the last few seconds of me climbing up the ladder with Zoey above me.
Looking at my demographic data which shows that males make up a large percentage of my viewers and the ages of 13-17 are also a large percentage of my viewers, I can hypothesize that my viewers only want to see the action parts of my videos and Zoey’s butt. I should give my viewers what they want, right? I’ll keep looking at my Insights data to better tailor what my viewers want so be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel, which can be located here and be on the lookout for future videos.
