First two in this series took a swing at whether YT even makes sense to begin with and the data point known as impressions.
Below please find Part 1 and Part 2:
YouTube - Why or Why Not - Part 1
YouTube - Impressions - Part 2
Let's get into the sources of traffic flow and what it might or could mean for a YT channel or business. There are a ton of data points and analytical tools inside YouTube Studio, but we will focus on the broader ones that show you where traffic comes from for now. These can help us ask and hopefully answer questions like the following:
How can we get anyone to visit our YT channel about life in Boston?
Where does traffic come from?
Remember - YT wants people to view your channel, and they want your channel to be immensely successful. In order to sustain a channel the traffic has to come from somewhere.
The below displays a snippet from YT Studio showing how viewers find the videos:
The first point we would make about the above is that all of those categories cost a grand total of $0. We consider this important. As opposed to say 'building' (and by that we mean whatever you may or may not consider building on YT) on Facebook, the setup and infrastructure is already there to send traffic to your videos and YT channel. It's not a guarantee, but like we said above, YouTube NEEDS independent creators and wants your channel to do well (since it helps them make money).
Suggested Videos: This is a critical category. We look at this as YT saying they are willing to put our content in front of certain viewers. Hmmmm, that sounds A LOT like the concept of the SERPs and SEO. However - in this case YT is willing to elevate your channel potentially immediately and in a strong manner. It takes much more than that to "rank on page one of Google".
Browse Features: YT defines this as traffic from the homepage, subscription feed, and other browsing features. Our take: more free traffic that is possible simply for participating.
YouTube Search: This is what you likely think it is. Users type searches into the search bar just like with Google. YouTube displays results. We look at this as well very favorably considering YT is the #2 search engine in the world.
Channel Pages: This is traffic from our YT channel, other YT channels, and other topic channels. We also view this in a positive manner. By using playlists and maintaining the channel we can get it into groupings and categories with other channels. Users could find our channel kind of like someone finds NESN when maybe they were using NBC Sports Boston and it is similar and complementary.
End Screens: This is a direct result of effort. When creating and ultimately publishing a video, one has the opportunity to use Playlists and End Screens. The End Screens show video options at the end of the target video. This is a chance for viewers to say "oh, I'll watch this one as well". Your effort - your results. YT tells you which ones perform the best as well.
Others: This includes External sources (shown below) and other avenues such as within videos, channels, or otherwise.
Depicted below is our breakdown of External sources:
We are fairly bullish on this. Sure - these sources currently only drive about 1% of traffic, but in our view that isn't the point. What we really like here is that YT videos are getting into the old fashioned SERPs - a trend we expect to pick up momentum. People like video search results. The above shows we have already gained traffic and viewers from all of the major search engines to include some mobile. If you look as well, much of this traffic is solid quality meaning they watch 40% or so or more of the content.
Here's a list of more external sources that have sent viewers and traffic to our YT channel about Boston:
Conclusion:
- YT's ecosystem and infrastructure is setup in such a way that a channel can conceivably quickly gain traffic from a variety of sources and mechanisms. We like this a lot. The sky is the limit in terms of where the channel could potentially gain traffic from at no cash cost.
- The Data and Analytics tools are robust (this blog post doesn't show nearly everything)
- The tools appear designed to help you grow more. Yes, we understand YT exploits the creators in terms of the breakdowns and percentages (markets will heal that over time). However, we find it tough to deny that there is at least some alignment in that YT will help a channel grow if it sees it as helping YT grow revenues.
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