If you are a content creator on YouTube, watch time is more important than views.
This is because more watch time means high audience retention on the videos, which simply means the videos are really helpful for the viewers.
YouTube pays its content creators according to viewers’ watch time and not views. So, if you want to make money on YouTube, you need to improve your videos’ watch time.
In a professional tone: A video with 5 minutes of average view duration at 1000 views is better than a video with 2 minutes and 30 seconds of average view duration at 5000 views.
More people will watch the first video till the end because it has higher audience retention, which means that YouTube will reward the channel by showing these videos more often to people who visit the channel. This ultimately leads to a high number of views, subscribers and monetization.
As a content creator on YouTube, I've had to learn the hard way that watch time is more important than views in terms of performance. Here's why:
Watch time is more important than views because more watch time means high audience retention on the videos
The more watch time on your videos, the higher the audience retention - that is the percentage of people who continue watching the videos rather than leaving them. This is a key metric for YouTube as it shows how helpful your videos are for viewers.
If viewers find your content helpful, they will not only watch more of it, but they will also provide positive feedback in the form of comments and likes, which will trigger even more viewers to watch your video.
Audience retention also helps you rank better in search results. It's not enough to have a large number of views if they don't stick around.
YouTube is a resource for people to learn about things that interest them, so as a content creator on YouTube, it's important to make videos that are useful, helpful and engaging.
Think of it this way: When someone is looking at their phone or computer screen, they're making a decision to watch your content instead of other content that they could be watching.
When you produce high-quality content that informs people and encourages them to engage with the subject matter, then you can build trust with your audience. In turn, that builds brand loyalty and will increase the chances of them visiting your channel again and watching more of your videos.
The metric that YouTube uses to measure this is watch time. Watch time refers to how much time viewers spend watching your video. Having a long watch time means that you've created video content that's interesting enough for people to keep watching until the end.
On the flip side, shorter watch times mean people are losing interest or aren't finding what they were looking for in your video.
On YouTube, you can see your watch time as a metric in both individual video analytics and overall channel analytics.
You can also see it in comparison metrics like average view duration and audience retention.
When you have high audience retention on your videos i.e Watch time is more important than views because it's a better indicator of how helpful your content actually is. Think about it this way: if you're trying to find a tutorial on how to do something, but the video only shows the first two seconds of how to do it, would you continue watching it? No! That's why a view count doesn't mean much—it doesn't necessarily mean that those viewers enjoyed your content or that they even watched past the first few seconds.
However, watch time does mean something—if someone watches all the way through to the end of your video, it means that they found it helpful and interesting.
The watch time metric is also important for YouTube's monetization features.
If you have a YouTube channel and want to make money from ads, YouTube needs to know that your videos are effective at keeping people watching so they can show them ads. Without high watch time metrics, YouTube won't share the earnings from the ads served on your videos.
If you're a YouTube content creator, the most important metric on your channel is watch time. This is the one that will help you build an audience and earn money from advertising. It's easy to get caught up in the numbers of views and subscribers, but views don't really mean much if your videos aren't getting any watch time. You want viewers to be engaged in what you're doing and to come back again and again to watch more of your stuff.
To measure watch time, you need to look at two things: how long people are watching a video on average, and how much of each video they're watching. You can find this data by looking at analytics for each video on your channel; then, click "See More" below the average view duration graph. The more people are watching in total, and the longer they're watching each video, the higher your watch time is.
The better your content is, the more people will stick around for it. This means that if you want high watch time, you should focus on making helpful content that really appeals to your audience's needs—because those are the people who are going to keep coming back to see what else you have to offer them. There are plenty of channels out there full of videos
Watch time is the total amount of time a viewer spends watching your videos.
YouTube wants to reward creators who make great content that keeps viewers engaged, so it gives priority to videos with higher watch time. If your video keeps people watching for longer periods of time, YouTube will rank it higher in search results and recommend it more often. Watch time is therefore a very important metric for content creators to focus on when publishing new videos.
When you know how long people spend watching your video, you can start to understand what kind of content your subscribers like best and how they're interacting with your channel overall.