In this blog post, TubeMogul, the online video stats site, calls for video sites to create a standardized model for view-counting. Earlier in the week, they posted a brilliant report about how different video sites track stats, with surprising differences.
The report points out some very interesting, maybe even shocking things. One of the most amazing things I found was that YouTube only counts a full view of a video in it’s statistics. Wow. So not only do they get by FAR the most views, they are getting whole views out of them. That’s pretty awesome. And important. Not unimportantly, therefor, the ‘most viewed’ videos are often the shortest. It doesn’t take long for a 5-second long Dramatic Chipmunk to rack up view stats. Long videos rarely reach their end and thereby subumb to a lack of numbers. Many views drive more views. Shorter vids = more views = more publicity = more shorter vids.
I agree with them on the need for standardization. As they point out, not being able to count views in a comparable way is hurting the industry and hindering a flourishing advertising market.
July 26th, 2007 at 3:09 am
YouTube has shared with me that they don’t require a full view. You can’t open a video and shut it immediately. But I know from non-YouTube sources that only a VERY small portion of people complete a view. So that bar’s too high. The biggest crime, of course, is faking views and I KNOW some sites are doing that.