YouTube gives content publishers Insight

YouTube content publishers and marketers have long been requesting further details about the traffic to their videos. Finally a toolset has been added that goes some way to appeasing them.

by Helen Leggatt

Until this week, content publishers on YouTube had access to limited data relating to video audience. Now, thanks to the newly launched YouTube Insight feature, content publishers have access to geographic and daily hit data.

For instance, it will now be possible to determine which country viewers are logging in from, based on IP address, and in the U.S. on a state-by-state basis.

Past visits can be analyzed using historical data to see if spikes in audience can be attributed to media coverage or campaign activity. Users can drill down to a day-by-day breakdown but day-part is not yet available.

Of course, the new data will also go some way toward enabling content publishers to ascertain advertising income and media buyers to identify the best-buy placements.

"Effectively, we've become the world's largest focus group," said YouTube product manager Tracey Chan.

While the data currently being made available is rather limited, YouTube does have plans to introduce new features in due course, such as how the viewer arrived at the content and video abandonment data.