YouTube consistently makes it easier to determine how a YouTube Partner’s video sharing business is performing. When this vlogger became a YouTube Partner in 2008, and thus able to earn money from video traffic via Google AdSense, YouTube’s online ad placement system, there was no built-in system of data collection so I could fine-tune my video offerings to meet market demand. You have to have the data to define what your market is before you can serve it.
Then, starting in 2009 and after a hue and cry by YT Partners, YouTube installed a system of what were called “Partner Reports,” which were downloadable PDF files that showed how much traffic your videos were generating. Then, in 2010 and as part of an overall site redesign, the reports were placed in a separate section called YouTube Analytics. There, you could, and can, see more detailed performance data on a per video basis.
This has helped to usher-in a new era of video industry engagement, as YouTube Partners now refer to their CPMs (cost-per-thousands) and now “Estimated Minutes Watched.”
“Estimated Minutes Watched” is a brand new feature that YouTube did not put in its corporate blog to introduce – it just popped up. But what you can now see is just how many total minutes for a day or week or month people have spent watching your videos.
For example, Zennie62 on YouTube viewers have watched 1.5 million minutes of video time over 1.2 million views over the last 30 days.
Why this addition? Well, for about the last year, YouTube has been on a mission to increase the average time viewers spend watching videos. To do that, YT is giving partners tools to know what the time metric is, in the hope that the creator will make the necessary adjustments.
In closing, what YouTube is doing in providing this kind of data is amazing. It’s changing the way YT Partners think about what they do, creating a new class of entertainment professionals in the process.