YouTube views are a vital metric to keep an eye on for any video creator, but they’re only part of the picture. YouTube is a highly competitive platform, and to truly stand out from the crowd you need to be keeping an eye on several other key metrics alongside your video views. With Databox, it’s easy to put together professional and understandable YouTube KPI dashboards in a matter of minutes.
What is a YouTube view?
YouTube defines a view as “a viewer-initiated intended play of your video lasting at least 30 seconds.” So, even if someone skips through your video, if they watch it for 30 seconds or more, that counts as a view. Repeated views also count. This applies to videos played on desktops or smartphones, as well as those embedded on other websites and shared via social media.
Aside from confirming that your videos are watched by real humans, the minimum 30-second watch time is an effort to discourage bots from artificially inflating your view counts. YouTube takes this seriously, and has a number of other anti-spam measures in place to ensure that fake engagement doesn’t degrade the quality of its content or harm its users.
Getting more views requires that you create compelling videos, optimize them for search, and use cards and end screens to encourage viewers to subscribe or visit your website. But it’s also important to remember that the most valuable views come from people who genuinely care about your brand, and are open to watching more of your content.YouTube views