YouTube, a site that was once notorious for pirated content and user-generated videos that were practically useless to brands, has made great strides in the last few years as it looks to appeal to its growing number of advertisers and content partners. Today the site is adding a new feature that makes the platform even more useful, adding Google’s powerful (and very popular) Analytics reporting to YouTube brand channels, adding some credence to YouTube’s claim that it’s the “world’s largest focus group”.
Before now brands (and general users) could keep tabs on how their videos were performing using YouTube Insight, which has some basic demographic information, tracks a video’s popularity around the world, and shows how your video is being rated by other users. But when it comes to more powerful tracking that’s useful to major websites and brands, it falls short. YouTube says that the addition of Google Analytics will allow them to track far more, with “reporting on their channel as if it were their own site”. From the new YouTube Biz Blog:
While all uploaders can still use YouTube Insight to learn detailed information about their video views and user engagement, now advertisers and partners with brand channels can get even more information about their audience. Brand channel owners can track metrics such as how long visitors stay, repeat visits, bounce rate, and page views per visitor. For those who want to tailor their videos to a specific audience, Google Analytics also provides data about where viewers are located geographically, and what languages they speak.
At this point it looks like the new feature will be limited to major brands and partners, and it’s not clear if it will be released to a more general audience. Most people probably wouldn’t care about such specific analytics, but I’m sure quite a few major YouTube users who aren’t necessarily large brands would be interested.