The concept isn’t exactly a ‘new’ one, YouTube has been gathering user data for quite a while now and anyone familiar with YouTube Insights will probably recognise a lot of the information in these reports, but there are a couple of handy improvements worth a mention.

So what’s new?

The first things you’ll notice are the cosmetic changes, a more intuitive layout, nice simple colour scheme, new buttons and titles for reports. But YouTube Analytics is more than just a prettier version of insights. The new overview gives an instant summary of your overall channel performance and engagement, with easy access to detailed information about individual videos that offers a more precise understanding of your audience. The data filter allows you to break down reports by content, geography, and date. Also you can now discover which videos are driving the most views and subscriptions, allowing you to focus your marketing on the most popular types of content.

The YouTube Analytics Overview breaks down the full details of all the options available but I’ve outlined some of my favorite features below.

Audience Retention: Formerly called Hot Spots, this report shows how far viewers watch through your video, really useful stuff if you want to understand how engaged people really are.

It measures the number of views for every moment of the video, so you can see where people have skipped forward, replayed a section or switched off. (Pay close attention to the first 15 seconds of every clip as according to YouTube that’s when your viewers are most likely to drop-off.)

YouTube even allow you to play back your video in the report to see exactly how it corresponds to the peaks and valleys of the graph. It’s a great way to work out the parts of your video that work best and identify any points where people start to get bored – that way you can focus on making the kind of content that your audience appears to enjoy.

Estimated earnings: This is useful if you’re interested in making money from your YouTube channel. You can see your total estimated earnings from the net revenue from Google-sold advertising, the estimated earnings from auction sold advertising via AdSense for Video and the estimated earnings from Doubleclick advertising and any other YouTube-sold sources.

Playback Location / Traffic Sources Report: Formally called Discovery, this report helps distinguish between how viewers found a video, i.e. through a YouTube search, Twitter link etc and where a video is being watched. It’s quite useful if you’re embedding your video on sites other than YouTube.

Why is it important to measure video performance?

If you are serious about using YouTube as a marketing tool it’s essential to set some goals, do you want it to drive traffic to your website? Generate ad revenue? Raise brand awareness? Whatever your targets are, the reporting data from analytics will help you to develop a deeper understanding of your audience and strategies and make well informed decisions when creating new content.

So if you’ve never explored the monitoring stats behind your content then this is the time to start!

This awesome little infographic from Voltier Digital examines the art of viral content marketing. From the importance of understanding virality and the power of social networks through to the anatomy of viral content & sharing and tips on self promotion, the all important ‘secret sauce’ for any viral hit.

Read it, it’s good!

Promoting tourism, like many other services is all about selling intangible experiences and video is a really effective way to capture consumer imagination. Customers are more likely than ever to research their travel and leisure options online before making a decision and what better way to wet the appetite than offer them a window into all the wonders the destination has to offer.

This video that we seeded for the agency DraftFCB shows that you don’t even have to picture the location to plant the idea that maybe it’s time for a holiday!

Click here to view the embedded video.

With a targeted media spend of £25,000 the clip received 213,476 views through the Viral Ad Network and has now reached almost 250,000 YouTube hits and counting. The video was placed on over 50 selected sites across the network with UK geo-targeting, sharable social buttons and a click through link to the campaign microsite.

Social Sharing…

The great thing about using a seeding service to give your video the initial push is that once people start to notice it the organic spread will happen naturally as it’s shared across social networks and it moves higher up the search ranking. The video has already been shared nearly 1,000 on Facebook.

Just a small push…

You don’t always need to have a big budget to get your video off the ground. This video produced by Consolidated PR for Tourism Ireland  is a great example of a low cost promotion. With a seeding budget of £4,000 the clip received 51,098 targeted UK views through the Viral Ad Network and a click through conversion rate of 2.25% and now has over 64,000 views on YouTube.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What about a video series?

Sometimes a great way to pique a viewers interest is to offer them a collection of clips so if they enjoy one they’ll naturally click next to see more. With a budget of just £1k The Viral Ad Network seeded a series of 3 short clips for the Western Austrailian Tourist Board, show casing the countries beautiful landscapes and underwater activities including this awesome video of Purnululu National Park. Collectively these videos have now had nearly 66,000 views and continue to be shared across social networking channels.

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Active seeding: this is the classic *video linking* and sharing with other blogs, to make sure your video is seen in as many places as possible.  You can do this manually, or automatically using a seeding service like the Viral Ad Network.
• Passive seeding: by this I mean *YouTube SEO* – i.e. optimising your video, so that it is more likely to be found.  YouTube optimisation is a fairly easy thing to do, however people are often pretty lazy when it comes to setting up their YouTube clip and forget that getting it right is the difference between your video going viral and getting lost in the YouTube jungle.

Me and my colleagues at the Viral Ad Network have put together 8 key tips on how best to optimise / set-up your video, which are in the slideshare below.  We also wrote an extended version of this in video SEO blog post.

Back in the 90s, search engine results were normally full of spam results. People who can’t remember the internet before Google often forget quite what I mean – These days you might still get one or two spam results, but back in the 90s it wasn’t uncommon for me to scroll through several pages of search results before I got to one that wasn’t spam.

When YouTube first launched, it’s search results could be spammed in fairly much the same way – leading to loads of companies giving “black hat” (i.e. spammy) advice on how to gain views on YouTube.
In the years since YouTube was bought by Google, they have put a lot of effort into avoiding this kind of spam – and just like traditional SEO, if you game the system too much your video is likely to be penalised.
For web spammers (who can easily create thousands of spam web sites) this is a hinderance – but if you are a reputable company with an expensive production cost to your videos then pushing the boundaries too much can seriously cost your campaign.
What counts as “spam”?
This is a tough one – but generally the idea is that someone watching a video should be counted as valid if the user has chosen to watch it.  That makes all of the following questionable practices:

• Auto-playing videos You can auto-play videos, and there are valid reasons you might want to. The user hasn’t chosen to watch the video though – so don’t expect the views to count on youtube.
• Sending people to a video page without telling them.  If somebody gets clicks on a link without knowing they’re going to see your video then they haven’t chosen to watch it. Don’t be surprised if these views get flagged as questionable by their anti-spam team, and your viewcount gets “stuck”.  This effect can be seen with viewers coming from services like StumbleUpon – people regularly notice that up to half the viewers from services like this don’t convert to views on YouTube. This is a result of the viewers not being engaged with the content – they didn’t choose to go to that specific video, so why should they count as views unless they stick around to watch most of the video?
• Using misleading tags / descriptions. If somebody thinks your video is about something other than what it is, then they haven’t really chosen to watch it. Don’t be surprised if you get penalised for using misleading descriptions.

(2) Make a great video

It goes without saying – but the better your video, the more people will be interested in it.
No matter how YouTube and Google change their sites or search algorithms – they are always going to try to show the videos they think people will be most interested in. If your video is one of them, then you have a massive bonus over other videos.
This should automatically carry over to increased numbers of “likes”, comments, favorites and subscriptions – all of which are potentially telling signs of how good a video is when YouTube decide which videos to feature higher in their results.
(3) Enable Embedding

If you disable embedding on your video then you’re blocking our a large segment of potential traffic straight away.
embedding isn’t just used for bloggers want to post your video on their blog – it’s also used by large social sites when their users share your content using a technology called “oEmbed”.
For example, when somebody posts a link to a YouTube video on facebook or twitter – the video is embedded on facebook/twitter itself, so the user never has to visit YouTube to watch it.
Of course, if you disable embedding then the video can’t be shown – your video won’t be embedded on facebook or twitter, and the user needs one more click before they can watch your video.

(4) Pick a great Title

Pick a title that’s concise, descriptive and engaging.
(5) Pick a great screenshot

Pick a screenshot that will get people clicking.  Make sure its engaging.  Make sure it works with the title.
(6) Upload subtitles (closed captions)

Uploading closed captions does more than allow deaf viewers to appreciate your video (Although that alone should be enough reason to add them) – it also allows Search engines (and YouTube) to understand the video and find out what it’s really about.
The better they know what it’s about, the more confident they can be about if viewers are going to be interested in it – and that’s what will fuel good placements on YouTube.

(7) Encourage people to interact

There are special sections on YouTube for: * Most Viewed * Most discussed * Most Liked * Most subscribed * Top Favorited
The higher you get in each category, the more extra views you will get from the exposure. If you encourage your viewers to comment, like, favorite, or subscribe then you’ve got a better chance of climbing those lists.

(8) Kick-start your campaign the right way

If you are planning to kick-start your campaign with a bought media spend then quality is really important.
When YouTube sees a large number of users watching your video, they can use feedback from those users to work out how interesting other users will find your video.
Only YouTube really know what kind of feedback they use – but some examples that they may use are how many viewers stop watching your video a few seconds into it – how many people leave the youtube watch page as soon as they have arrived, the ratio of likes to dilikes, and how positive the comments are.
If that automated feedback is good then your video is likely to be shown to more users in search results and across the site.
To have a better chance of getting good feedback, try to place the video so that people watching it know what to expect – rather than trying to get every man and their dog to watch the video – which might reduce the quality of their feedback.

Of course our suggestion would be to kick off your campaign with paid for seeding from the Viral Ad Network

Here’s a few quick tips to maximise the effectiveness of your Viral video campaign.

Bigger isn’t always better.

People have a short attention span online, so keeping your video short is the best tactic. By all means have a long version of the Viral that the most engaged viewers can seek out, but use a concise version to take to the masses. We reckon a minute is a good target to aim for.

Be entertaining / interesting

If your content interests people, they’re far more likely to keep watching and ultimately engage with your brand. Seems obvious, but it’s amazing how many people will create a ‘viral’ that is actually just a dry sales message. Whilst this approach can work for TV advertising, online viewers will just stop watching if they aren’t engaged. Online video campaigns generally work better for branding campaigns rather than explaining your newest product’s features.

Start with a BANG!

Get your key message across in the first 10 seconds of the video. People will make up their mind pretty quickly if they are gonna keep watching, so its key to grab their attention from the start. You should also plan for a drop out towards the end of the video.

Leverage the Love

If people have enjoyed your video they will be more open to engaging with other marketing content. Include a call to action at the end of your video – drive traffic to your FB page, YT channel or website. You can also offer a click through link in the video description (or as part of the VAN viral player)

(image via http://thingsthataretotallyawesome.wordpress.com/)

As grime took over, the mainstays of the UK hip hop scene must have hit hard times. Here is a video posted back in February of someone who was convinced that Jehst was their postman!

Click here to view the embedded video.

But like every (sometimes embarassing) trend it will almost certainly have a come back, and maybe Jehst is onto something. He seems to have embraced the internet and launched his own viral campaign for the launch of his new album, and to be fair the response so far on Youtube seems to have been quite good…

Here’s the follow up video, the scallywag:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Among other things, an efficient market means that the amount of money available to companies is closely connected to their real value (so useful companies can continue to expand), and the world economy is tied together by the value countries provide (Most would argue that the recent financial problems are a result of a lack of efficiency in the markets – particularly the housing market).

The connection between stock markets and ad networks is fairly clear – we have buyers (advertisers), and sellers (publishers). Creating an efficient market means that advertisers aren’t being overcharged for what they receive, and that publishers aren’t being under-paid for what they deliver.

So by increasing the efficiency of advertising for advertisers and publishers, we get to help web site owners with great ideas get paid to make their great ideas a reality, and we help advertisers make a profit from their advertising. Getting an ad network to run smoothly helps both sides win.

Although online video has the potential to organically generate massive engagement and millions of views, this is definitely not guaranteed. Setting a realistic expectation of return is something that is vital, but often missed when pitching the idea of branded video to a client.

There is the potential of free views! By uploading content to multiple video networks like Youtube or Vimeo you can achieve some free views. The bonus of this is that it’s quick and easy to do and in some cases, where the content is highly shareable and the brand is lucky enough to strike the right chord at the right time, it can be very successful.

However, with the growing mass of videos out there, this is becoming an increasingly risky tactic for distribution as your video may never even be discovered. Making a video, uploading it to youtube and then just sitting back and waiting for views to roll in is a common mistake, and one that often results in an unhappy client!

You can eliminate the risk of that awkward client meeting by including paid seeding in your proposal. This will not only raise your chances of a viral smash, but will also give a safety net of returns for your client.

The chart below show the rough costs and returns of a small video campaign with and without an included media spend.

In part 4 – see how you can use video as an ongoing communication channel for your brand client, and an ongoing revenue stream for you.

(Disclaimer: these numbers are estimated and may not necessarily reflect real-life results, which will depend on individual campaigns)