The number of views is a key parameter to consider when estimating how viral a video is on YouTube, regardless of its length. Most Youtubers, especially marketing professionals, focus on it to see how many Internet users have been won over by their content, which is the reward for what they have invested in the production (time, energy, budget, etc. .). But how does YouTube determine how many views a video has gotten? We will explain to you later in this article.
Under what conditions do we speak of “views”?
To prevent the results from being scrambled by algorithms, YouTube filters video views to retain only "legitimate" views (from real people). Thus, conditions must be met for a video to be taken into account:
- The user must manually press the play start button.
- Playback should be full for a promotional video that is 11-30 seconds long, or it should be a minimum of 30 seconds for a longer video.
- Viewings of commercial videos that pass through YouTube's "TrueView in-stream" (advertising service which consists of broadcasting a video on YouTube and on Google's "Display" network in parallel) are more or less counted according to the same principles as "simple" views, but the user must also manually add reactions.
- As for repeated plays, YouTube counts them up to 4 or 5 times in the same day from the same device or account. After 24 hours, the reading will be counted again.
How are the views in YouTube Analytics?
YouTube Analytics is the function that allows you to study everything that influences the number of views. There are three different possible representations for a number of views (on the video watch page, on the search page and on the statistics). To manage their video views more effectively, professionals have access from YouTube Analytics' "real-time activity measurement" to an evaluation that is not exactly the same as the one displayed on the video views, as it predicts how many views your video can achieve, based on your past results. Brands will thus have an overview of the success rate of their content.
Why do view rollups seem to stagnate?
For a recent video, the view counter usually hangs a bit at 301 views, but that doesn't mean they've stopped growing. It's just that at this point, the video becomes eligible for compensation and to be on the main YouTube page or in the suggestion list, which explains the processing time. You should also take into account that the platform must first sort between legitimate views and those suspected of coming from machines, before updating them more regularly and displaying them to you in a more concrete way.
