If you haven’t read my first two blogs, it was about two YouTubers who do video essays on gaming and internet culture, as these are videos i’m really interested in. The thing that I find is that these videos have a certain reach and don’t get the amount of views other Youtuber’s get. I have realised that people might not be so familiar with this side of the internet, as these videos require you to dig deep into the YouTube alorithm by watching videos you would usually not click on and instead of watching what’s “trending” on the website.
So now I’ll be focusing on the YouTube Algorithm and how content creators keep there viewer’s enganged with YouTube’s analytic system.
problematizing:
When making a YouTube video, their are a lot of factors that need to be concidered before uploading and publishing the video, a main one being the algorithm. The way YouTube Algorithm works can be confusing (and I don’t think I even know how it works to be completley honest), but some articles have had a good grasp on the works of it. In the article it explains the concept of viewership and how people watch content. A study by Pew Research Centre shows that 80% of viewers are more likely to click on a video that is recommended to the viewer instead of finding their own video to watch. This is the loop YouTubers get stuck in trying to make their videos appeal to audiences.
YouTube is all about collecting data, this data consists of; how many views a video is getting, the watchtime of the video and how it can get recommended to other viewers. YouTube takes in this information per video and lets content creators know how good their video did, this is by giving the creator an option to see the analytics of their video which consists of:
- Reach
– Impressions (how many people saw the video in their timeline)
– Impressions click through rate
– Views
– Subscribers
– Unique viewers (people who haven’t watched your content before) - Engagment
– Watch time (how many hours of your content was watched)
– Average view duration (audience retention)
The reasons I’m talking about this is becasuse it’s all the factors that need to be known when making a YouTube video, and this isn’t something you learn straight away when you start making videos, they need to educate themselves on the algorithm and know if they are advertising their videos correctly.
I am interested in this side of YouTube as I like to make YouTube videos in my own time, and I am always curious on the YouTube Algorithm and which videos are getting more views then others.
I do like seeing how content creators work with the algorithm and wanted my research to be on the viewers experience with what videos are shown in people’s timelines. This might be done through surveys or posting in reddit forums/facebook pages.
Research Timeline:
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