A new group of metrics on Google AdWords forYouTube has advertisers getting excited this week. Lately this blog has featured a number of stories about how things are getting tougher in the world of search engine optimization due to disappearing keyword data; however, when it comes to online video, the trend is in the opposite direction. Google clearly sees this as the way of the future – a natural form for advertisements to take – and it is also a great opportunity for it to further promote YouTube; therefore, everybody wins.
The new metrics in question relate to how users respond to videos and bear the headers earned views, earned view rate, earned playlist additions, earned subscribers, earned likes and earned shares. What does earned mean in this context? It basically refers to things that a YouTube channel owner has gained as result of the quality of content posted on it. This means that if, for instance, users like a video so much that they share it with friends, these count as earned shares and are distinct from shares that may happen in other contexts, such as when a blog with a focus on a particular subject is collecting lots of related links referred by its subscribers.
Having access to this information and checking its progress over time gives business users of YouTube the opportunity to measure the success of different videos against one another and to get a more in-depth picture of customer engagement. Access also makes it easier for users to determine how much of the growth a channel experiences is related to its content and how much is down to promotion in other places, which can help with making decisions about the amount of time and money worth investing in such promotion.
To use this feature it is necessary to go to account linking and connect AdWords with the relevant YouTube account; this process has now been streamlined and is much simpler to use than it used to be. It is worth getting on it right away, as further useful metrics are expected to be added over the next few weeks.
The timing of these developments further strengthens the argument that online video is developing into a key tool for business promotion. Google’s big thing has always been prioritizing good-quality content. With a video there is not really a lazy, spam-equivalent way to go; unless people find it engaging, they will just switch off.
