In many ways, there are more social video platforms and apps available to creators than ever before. Yet, despite the rising numbers of creators and viewers using apps like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook for video content these days, YouTube is still far and away the biggest and most popular player in this space.
Plus, with the addition of YouTube Shorts, which has seen its own meteoric growth, YouTube remains the best option for all types of brands and content creators looking to grow channels and engage audiences.
But just because it’s popular doesn't mean it’s easy. If you’re looking to grow your follower count and find more success with your YouTube channel, there are some important metrics to understand and target.
Let’s look at how the all-important YouTube average view duration works. And, if you’d like to see better retention, engagement, and conversion rates, let’s explore how you can increase your average view duration on YouTube.
The basics of YouTube metrics
Before we dive into some practical tips and tricks to help you increase the average view duration for your YouTube videos, let’s go over some basics about how YouTube works and how the app monitors (and rewards) different metrics.
At the heart of YouTube’s metrics and analytics are these key variables:
- Views
- Likes
- Comments
- Shares
- Watch time
Together, these metrics inform YouTube’s advanced algorithm, which ultimately decides what content appears recommended for different users. This is obviously very important because if you create content that hits the right metrics, it can trigger a viral response where your content can get hundreds of thousands of views (and view hours) in a short period of time.
Also, as we all know, more views equal more monetization opportunities. As we’ve covered on the blog in the past, there’s a lot to learn about how YouTube monetization works. The basics are as follows: You’ll need to be accepted into the YouTube Partner Program (aka the YPP) before you can start monetizing your content.
Curious how much YouTube watch time is required for monetization?Well, the answer isn’t a mystery; YouTube currently dictates that YouTube channels must at least get 1,000 subscribers and 4000 hours watch time before they can start earning from YouTube.
What is a good average view duration on YouTube?
Now, alongside the metrics above and the total amount of watch time a video gets, one of the most important metrics that YouTube’s algorithm considers when determining what to recommend is the YouTube average view duration.
There are many other significant benefits to having a greater average view duration, YouTube most notably includes more advertising and monetization opportunities with greater viewer engagement and retention.Plus, the longer viewers watch your video, the more likely they are to subscribe, like, or further engage with your channel and brand.
But what is the average view duration on YouTube? Well, it depends. Average view durations can vary widely based on many factors, including the overall length of your content, the type of content that you’re creating (aka your niche—find out what the most popular YouTube niches ranked by CPM are here), or even the platform where your viewing is watching your content from.
With all that being said, if you can keep your YouTube average view duration over 50%, you’ll always be in a good position to succeed with your goals. A 50% average view duration is an ideal goal, as the majority of view duration numbers almost always fall in the less than one-minute category.
If you’re getting more viewers to watch at least half of your content, or—better yet—able to make it all the way to the end, you’re doing your job exceptionally.
How to find your YouTube average view duration
As with any other metrics and YouTube analytics, you can find your average view duration on YouTube on the Analytics page in YouTube Studio. If you haven’t explored YouTube Studio itself much, it’s pretty much your home base for managing all of your YouTube videos and content.
- To look at average view duration specifically, follow these simple steps:
- Open YouTube Studio
- Navigate to the Analytics tab
- Click on the Content tab and select a time period to review
- From here you’ll be able to see your average view duration for your entire channel
If you’d like to further review individual videos’ average view duration, simply click on the Audience tab and navigate to the Advanced Mode section, then click on the average view duration in the drop-down menu under Content.
Some tips for how to increase your average view duration on YouTube
Finding and reviewing your YouTube average view duration is really the easy part here. The real challenge for most brands and content creators is actually to find the best ways to increase their average view duration.
To help you with your content creation journey, here are some tips to keep in mind as you look to increase your average view duration on YouTube.
1. Make sure you’re properly licensed music and assets!
By far the most important tip here is to make sure you’re only using properly licensed music, sound effects, and other assets in your videos. If you’re using copyrighted music on YouTube that you haven’t legally obtained the rights to use, your content is liable to be muted, taken down, or—in extreme cases—even have your account blocked or banned.
Your best bet for working with music and assets in your videos is to license royalty free music from trusted sources like Soundstripe. We have plenty of high-quality royalty free music YouTube music tracks as well as some of our favorite royalty free YouTube Shorts songs ready for you to review, so check them out today.
2. Find the right niche for your content
Our second tip is to simply make sure that you’re creating the right content for the right audience. YouTube is a vast space that is growing every day. To help make it more manageable and easier to understand, it’s best to think of YouTube as a conglomerate of hundreds of smaller niche spaces.
If you can accurately identify what niche you and your content belong in and what niche your ideal audience resides in, you can focus your content to be part of a specific community
3. Start out your videos with a bang
As you’ll quickly see when reviewing your video analytics on YouTube, the vast majority of viewers of all videos don’t make it past the first few seconds or minutes. If you want your videos to be in the best space to succeed and see a larger average view duration, be sure to start your videos off with a bang. Shoot to make them exciting, engaging, and watchable immediately.
4. Keep things moving
By the same token, just because you’ve captured a viewer's attention initially, don’t think you’ve earned it for life. The charts for most YouTube videos are a steady downward line simply because every second is a battle. Viewers have a million things to distract them from other apps, notifications, or things outside their focus on their smartphones, computers, or television.
If you want a viewer to keep watching, you have to constantly be giving them a reason to reinvest and stay tuned.
5. Be genuine and tell a story
Ultimately, though, there’s no secret formula or sauce to increasing your average view duration on YouTube. You can better understand how YouTube’s algorithm works and how to monitor metrics surrounding view duration.
However, the real and best trick for increasing view duration is to simply focus on creating genuine, sincere, and meaningful content. Be a storyteller, not a marketer, and you’ll find that the rest of the success metrics will take care of themselves.
