Today we’re pulling out an old case study to provide insight on that all-too-common problem – scalable YouTube video optimization.

Media giant AOL migrates videos to YouTube. We handle the heavy lifting. We provide scalable YouTube optimization for AOL’s large content archive, while centralizing their video marketing workflow into a secure, single-touch suite of software tools that can be accessed by anyone on their video team.

Organic YouTube Marketing & SEO Expertise From the vidIQ Archives | AOL Case Study

The client is AOL, a multinational mass media corporation that develops, grows, and invests in brands and websites. AOL is a major original content creator on YouTube, with millions of viewers across their series of channels.

Having moved from a proprietary CMS to YouTube, AOL has too much video content to optimize or maintain manually. They need a simple video marketing software solution that…

Minimizes time investment for managing brand channels, optimizing new videos, and publishing across multiple media platforms. Provides clear, actionable YouTube viewer data and insights. Keeps content and data secure.

We leverage vidIQ’s YouTube SEO tool to add optimal tags to AOL’s existing videos and to optimize their video marketing content on an ongoing basis.

Additionally, the insights provided by our social media tracking and YouTube community metrics allow AOL to discover how their users are engaging with content.

Finally, AOL team members can create vidIQ accounts with tiered permissions to upload, optimize, and publish video content across all their media platforms simultaneously.

Week-over-week, they observe a 10% increase in video views. 30,000+ Twitter conversations discovered about their YouTube videos. Central marketing hub promotes collaboration and reduces the personnel cost of YouTube channel management. Services Used vidIQ Pro + vidIQ HootSuite App

vidIQ tackles YouTube SEO head-on with Tag Recommendations, a crucial tool for the growth of AOL’s diverse brand channels.



– Paul Cooney, AOL’s YouTube Partnership Manager

Black silhouette of factory building with chimney representing industrial production icon

Q: How do you optimize a huge video archive without millions of man-hours?
A: Call vidIQ.

From the vidIQ Archives | AOL Case Study

The general wisdom is to produce, produce, produce – which is the YouTube marketing equivalent of the fool’s adage, “Any decision is better than no decision.”

But content, and its consumers, have been around for a long time. And the thread that connects them has always been simpler than strategy, more powerful than promotion, and greater than hype.

At vidIQ, YouTube and YouTube marketing is our business – so we get it. It seems necessary to surrender to the daily scramble to produce, produce, produce on your channel. It’s easy to lose sight of the real goals of video marketing, to get lost in the endless lists of “YouTube Tips and Tricks” and to worship the newly-deified metrics of “Subscribers” and “Total Views.”

Instead, sit back for a moment – just one moment in this hypnotically hectic world of newsfeeds – to consider the wisdom of great creators who have come before you.

It’s more comforting than cat pictures, I promise.

Quote Credit: BrainyQuote Original Photo Credit: Vinoth Chandar

“Of all our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.” – Walt Disney

Walt Disney - Mass Communication Quote Credit: BrainyQuote Original Photo Credit: James Vaughan

It’s not enough to communicate, video marketing can make you understood.

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” – Confucius

Quote Credit: BrainyQuote Original Photo Credit: FrontierOfficial

Commitment to your content and campaigns is integral to success.

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” – Aristotle

Aristotle - Pleasure in Work Quote Credit: BrainyQuote Original Photo Credit: BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives

Do only what you enjoy, if you want to do it well.

“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” – John Lennon

John Lennon - Time Wasted Quote Credit: BrainyQuote Original Photo Credit: Fabiola Medeiros

Don’t waste time on pursuits you don’t enjoy.

“Information is not knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

Einstein - Info Not Knowledge Quote Credit: BrainyQuote Original Photo Credit: Marius B

“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” – William Shakespeare

Shakespeare - Wise Fool Quote Credit: BrainyQuote Original Photo Credit: Mykl Roventine

You don’t know everything, and that’s okay.

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller

Helen Keller - Do Much Together Quote Credit: BrainyQuote Original Photo Credit: Melanie Holtsman

It takes a village to succeed in content.

The last 20 years, and the mass adoption of the internet, have created the illusion that human beings can build complete digital worlds, will new markets into existence, and create content for viral consumption, all at once and all by themselves. But, as with all human endeavor, we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Look to the history of marketing – or, heck, just the history of history – and you’ll find an unbroken chain of collaboration, experimentation, and creation.

At vidIQ, we know YouTube and we know you know content.

Maybe we should create something together?

Click here to download our free Chrome extension

Woman sitting on rock overlooking Grand Canyon with Confucius inspirational quote

With video marketing moving at the speed of light, it’s easy to get wild-eyed about your workflow.

8 YouTube-Worthy Tips from History’s Greatest Content Creators

We’re thankful that you’ve helped vidIQ grow to over 10k active weekly users since launching vidIQ Vision at VidCon last year:

In celebration of your support, we have added Velocity, our trending indicator, to the vidIQ Vision Chrome extension for all users.

No longer will you have to rely on total views and upload date to get a gauge on how fast a video is trending…

This would be like looking at your cars odometer to gauge its speed…

With an average of 22M+ Views Per Hour (VPH) occurring on YouTube (numbers reported by Nielson), it’s important to understand where those views are being spent in real-time.

When you load a video, now you’ll be able to see its Velocity in Views Per Hour (VPH):vphcut

To give you an idea of how fast videos typically move:

100-200k VPH is what the top 5 videos on YouTube are speeding along at

250k VPH – peak of Caitlen Heller Twerking spoof

650k VPH – PSY Gangnam Style during peak

750k VPH – Budweiser Up for Whatever Commercial (day of Superbowl)

1.2M VPH – Budweiser Puppy Love (day of Superbowl)

If it’s trending in a specific country we’ll also display the video’s per country ranking:

To explore the top videos from a specific category, or country, take a look at the Velocity Section for daily as well as real-time stats:

We’ve been using this tool internally for the last few weeks and hope you’ll like the sixth sense it gives you when working on YouTube. 

If you don’t have it installed, you can get started here

Close-up of a futuristic speedometer gauge with glowing blue and red indicators on black background

It’s not an easy task to grow your views and subscribers organically and it has been a privilege guiding you in the quest for video marketing success.

First Ever YouTube Speedometer – vidIQ Velocity

It’s a surprisingly powerful new metric that monitors the amount of videos YouTube is recommending back to a publisher’s own channel.

In the Budweiser Super Bowl Puppy Love video, we’re tracking a rating of 4/20, meaning 4 of the 20 videos YouTube is recommending after the video and on the sidebar are also on the Budweiser channel.

It’s not as glamorous as some other metrics, but this has huge implications for channel (and thus brand) engagement. Think about it: someone loved your video and watched it to the end, but then what? Either they hit the search bar to find something similar (which is probably going to be on someone else’s channel), or they’re so engaged they can’t help but click to watch another in the recommendations. The more of those videos that are on your channel, the higher the total views your channel will receive when those videos explode, and the better your brand sticks with each viewer.

4/20: This is the lowest Creator Suggested rating a channel can have and a sign the channel isn’t focused enough on playlists, proper metadata, and annotations.

6/20 – 10/20: You’re on your way! We’ve seen great channels averaging around here, like The Verge and American Express.

12/20 – 16/20: If you’re here, you’re killing it. This channel is likely in the ranks of Red Bull, Buzzfeed, and Old Spice.

20/20: At this point, you’ve likely been “whitelisted” by YouTube. We’ve seen some huge non-profits, political parties, and brands spending a significant amount on YouTube to get here. ARDrone, Nintendo, and The Olympics are great examples.

As of writing this, we are seeing the University of Minnesota have a very viral moment with Guy Pulls Out Sign on Gophers Kiss Cam. They worked to get a 19/20 on Creator Suggested, and that will pay off as this video drives a massive amount of views and increased watch time throughout their YouTube channel. That’s more watches, shares, and engagement with their canon of videos, leading to exponentially more total views as people continue flocking to them.

If you take a second to look through the channel, you can see they didn’t get here by luck, or even a huge budget. They just consistently upload content, grow their subscribers, annotate, and actively playlist content.

There’s no secret to success like this, just sound YouTube marketing practice. And sound practice starts with the right data to build it on, which can all be yours with the vidIQ Chrome Extension.

Don’t have the vidIQ Chrome Extension? Make sure to download it here.

vidIQ SEO score 76.4 with video optimization metrics and engagement data overview

Creator Suggested is a new metric we’ve been running in our Chrome Extension for the last couple of months.

What Is Creator Suggested?

We’ve been hard at work developing a competitive analysis tool that will help brands on YouTube improve their business intelligence – and today we’re happy to announce its availability to all vidIQ users!

Starting today you’ll be able to track your competitors’ growth on YouTube and see how you stack up against your competition, including views and subscribers by timeframe. This is just the beginning – stay tuned for many more exciting features in the future!

Haven’t signed up for vidIQ yet, click here now!

 There hasn’t been a better time – get started growing your YouTube audience today.

Line graph comparing Coca-Cola and Pepsi views and subscriptions growth over months.

Success on YouTube isn’t always about tracking just your metrics – it’s about gaining valuable insights into your competitors too!

Introducing YouTube Competitor Analysis

The vidIQ score takes into account a ton of different stats to determine the likelihood that of your video surfacing in YouTube Search, Related Videos, and the Front Page.

We look at total amount of engagements (accross YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook), velocity of that post, and views. We use a logarithmic function based on all this data and come up with a 0-100 score.

The videos with most velocity, engagement and views on YouTube will be a 100/100. If you have none of these you'll be closer to 0/100.

By finding videos that are achieving a higher vidIQ Score, you can better identify what's working on YoutTube.

YouTube video analytics dashboard showing Sherlock Series 4 teaser with engagement data

vidIQ Score: How We Rank YouTube Videos

Alas, no matter how many times you’ve learned how to buckle your seatbelt and return your seat back to its full upright position, you’re still obligated to re-learn every time you fly.

Luckily some clever aviation brands have taken it upon themselves to relieve their passengers of their woe by snazzing up their videos and unleashing them on the YouTube masses – and they’re really popular.

In the last three weeks alone four airline pre-screening videos accrued 4.7 million YouTube views – the most popular of which, a collaboration between Disney and KLM, nearly topped the vidIQ/Adweek Top 10 YouTube Brand Videos chart last week. These brands are leveraging collaborations and influencers in extraordinary ways in order to drive earned media and build brand equity – all things we’re very fond of here at vidIQ. Watch the videos below, check out their stats, and discover what they’re doing right or wrong.

Air New Zealand’s “Betty White — Safety Old School Style #airnzsafetyvideo”

Betty White’s collaboration with ANZ solidifies this air safety video as an instant classic.

Great number of shares on Facebook and Twitter. Well tagged! Solid, engaging description. Includes an end-card and annotations promoting other content. Cons:

End-card/annotations could be more engaging. No brand engagement with their commenters (proven to improve views by 4X). Could be promoting more links in description. KLM’s “Disney’s Planes: spectacular pre-screening on board of a KLM plane”

While it’s not a safety video per se, KLM’s pre-screening collaboration with Disney builds awareness for Pixar’s forthcoming “Planes.”

Above average Watch Time. Great number of shares on Facebook, Twitter. Well tagged! Good description length. Cons:

No end-card promoting other videos/a CTA! No links in description. No brand engagement with their commenters (proven to improve views by 4X). Virgin America’s “Safety Video #VXsafetydance”

Virgin proves everything is better with a robot-dance ensemble wearing flotation devices.

Great number of shares on Facebook, Twitter. Well tagged! Solid, engaging description. Cons:

No end-card promoting other videos/a CTA! No brand engagement with their commenters (proven to improve views by 4X). Could be promoting more links in description. Delta’s “Holiday In-Flight Safety Video”

Delta proves it’s never too early to start advertising Christmas with a creepy human-sized nutcracker.

No tags! Huge loss of organic traffic because of this. No description! How is your viewer supposed to know what action they should take next? No end-card promoting other videos/a CTA! No brand engagement with their commenters (proven to improve views by 4X). Could be promoting more links in description. Know any other great airline industry video examples? Let us know in the comments!

Bar chart showing social media engagement by airline on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube platforms

October has been a big month for a much-unloved fixture of air travel – the dreaded FAA mandated airline safety lesson that precedes every takeoff.

Airline Safety Videos Take Off On YouTube

Our rankings are based off of top gainers per week by views, and include our vidIQ Score as well as Twitter and Facebook engagement metrics.

If you haven’t already, check out the YouTube chart for August 4th – August 10th!

We hope you enjoy our new YouTube charts – be sure to check out Adweek.com/VideoWatch every week to see the new rankings!"

vidIQ and Adweek logos on blue background with upward trending graph arrows

Exciting news for YouTube creators, brands, and stats nerds! We have partnered with Adweek to provide weekly YouTube rankings for the Top 10 YouTube Brand Videos and Top 10 YouTube Web Series Videos

vidIQ Partnership With Adweek: Top YouTube Brand/Creator Video Charts

Our new customizable Advanced Analytics dashboard helps YouTube creators answer the question: “What are the top things driving watch time on my channel?”

Provides an at-a-glance understanding of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter engagement data all in one location.

We break down the best time of day to post to YouTube for every day of the week, ensuring your channel’s programming schedule is set up to maximize engagement.

Drill down into your YouTube watch time metrics by source, including top YouTube and Google search keywords driving watch time, Embed URL watch time metrics, and watch time by country.

Understand the demographic makeup of your YouTube audience by gender, geographic location, and more.

If you haven’t already given vidIQ a spin, get started and start growing your audience!

Line chart tracking YouTube views, likes, shares, comments, and Facebook interactions in July

As we covered in our new Chrome extension announcement last week, success on YouTube is about more than just views. Helping YouTube creators understand what factors contribute to their channel’s success is our #1 priority at vidIQ, which is why today we’re announcing a complete revamp of our analytics suite.

Introducing Advanced YouTube Analytics Revamp

Install our Chrome extension and we provide you with key insights into what the top creators are doing to drive growth, increase engagement, and create viral content

So for every video you view on YouTube (not just yours) you’ll now see the vidIQ Vision “widget” that ranks every video with vidIQ’s proprietary Score as well as shows you Key Performance Indicators, including:

Helps judge the likelihood of a video being promoted in Related Videos, Search, and Recommended Videos.

You’re now able to see Watch Time not just for your own videos but for any video you’re looking at.

See how many times someone on Facebook has Liked, Shared or included your video’s URL in a comment.

See how many times someone has included your video’s URL in a Tweet, as well as the actual tweets themselves.

WPM shows you how many words per minute a video has. According to our dataset (from 8k+ channels) the most successful videos have higher WPM (~220). In other words, the faster you talk & the more jump cuts you add the more engagement + views you’ll get (surprising, I know!). This would explain why Jenna Marbles talks so fast (people have short attention spans!).

YouTube recently started hiding video tags. We surface them. This is extremely valuable for brands (if I’m Pepsi I probably want to see what Coca Cola is tagging their videos with).

We tell you the best number of links to add.

We tell you whether your description is too short or just right.

Chrome users can install vidIQ Vision for free by clicking here

Thumbnail of YouTube video "True Facts About The Owl" with two owls close-up and stats.

As we all know success on YouTube is about more than just views. There’s a lot of confusion about what metrics YouTube marketers should be paying attention to, so we developed vidIQ Vision to eliminate that confusion.

Introducing vidIQ Vision: A YouTube Chrome Extension For Power Users

And it’s just the beginning. As with any gold rush, those with the best tools will ultimately win out.

Which is why at vidIQ we’re extremely excited to be building the most robust MCN tools in the industry.

YouTube is becoming an increasingly crowded marketing channel, and getting “easy” subscribers and views will only become harder as more brands and creators scramble to get in on the action. Creators are beginning to realize that an MCN is only as good as the tools they provide, and MCNs are looking to vidIQ to provide their creators with tools that give them a leg up, drive real growth, and help manage their increasingly large networks of channels.

For Networks, some of the benefits we provide are:

With vidIQ’s White Label Support, YouTube networks are able to create a personalized experience for their creators with assets that reflect the network’s unique brand and identity.

Our Network Manager allows YouTube networks to easily invite and onboard their creators in a simple, intuitive workflow. Moreover, networks are able to easily keep tabs on their channels to see how they’re performing.

For creators, if your network uses vidIQ you gain access to our entire suite of YouTube marketing tools that optimize every step of your workflow and help supercharge your YouTube strategy. You get:

Take the guesswork out of tagging and titling your videos – vidIQ optimizes your metadata for maximum reach.

Gain invaluable insights into your audience, discover your super fans, and connect with them to drive growth.

Reign in your YouTube channel with advanced comment moderation tools built especially for the enterprise.

Stay focused on what matters with unparalleled insights into audience viewing habits and engagement metrics.

Manage multiple channels, invite your team, and define workflows with tools that promote collaboration.

Save time, money, and your sanity by automating many of the YouTube marketing tasks in your daily routine.

At vidIQ, our agile team is constantly innovating and creating amazing features for YouTubers big and small.

vidIQ logo on blue background with upward trending graph for MCN growth and optimization

If the recent deluge of investment in YouTube MCNs proves anything, it’s that online video has entered a feverish gold rush phase.

The Best YouTube Marketing Tools for Multi Channel Networks

Our YouTube comment moderation tool provides brands with enterprise level audience insight and control over interactions occurring around their videos – and today we’re making it even better.

With YouTube Comment Search, vidIQ users now have a powerful search tool that allows them to easily decrease comment spam, reduce illicit comments, or perform viewer sentiment analysis.

Combined with the ability to sort commenters by reputation, reply to comments from any of your YouTube channels, and unearth a viewer’s comment history, you now have a powerful arsenal of YouTube management tools at your fingertips.

If you haven’t already given vidIQ a spin, get started and start growing your audience

Search bar with autocomplete suggestions for YouTube comment search queries on blue background.

Engaging with your YouTube commenters is proven to increase your views by 4X – which is why we encourage all of our brands and creators to embrace the YouTube comments section rather than fear it.

Rob Sandie

Posts Written By Rob Sandie