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Quick! What’s the most important part of a YouTube video? Is it the beginning, middle, or end?
If you know the answer, that means you understand the power of audience retention on YouTube. If you’re unsure or don’t know much about this channel-boosting metric, that’s OK. We’re seconds away from sharing the answer.
In this episode of TubeTalk, our co-hosts Dan and Rob reveal lesser-known secrets about audience retention. Listen to the episode above to soak up all the wisdom, or keep reading to discover those gems right now.
Why does audience retention matter so much on YouTube? Aren’t video views the supreme metric for growing a channel?
Not quite. Audience retention measures how entertaining a video is. More than anything, that’s the key to unlocking more views.
Read More: How to Increase Audience Retention on Every YouTube Video
The YouTube Studio has a detailed audience retention report. It shows a video's average view duration, which is how many minutes viewers watched on average. In a hypothetical scenario, you might have a 10-minute video that people watch for four minutes.
And then there’s the average percentage viewed, which is also known as audience retention rate. Here's how YouTube calculates it: Average view duration / length of video x 100 = audience retention rate.
“A good example would be, let’s say your video is five minutes and the average view duration is two and a half minutes,” Rob says. “That would be exactly 50% audience retention.”
And guess what? The higher your audience retention rate climbs, the easier it is to succeed on YouTube.
Some of the benefits are:
Read More: YouTube Algorithm Guide - How Your Videos Are Recommended to Viewers
When creators discover audience retention, they usually have the same question about it: What’s a good audience retention rate?
But coming up with a general number is difficult for two reasons:
But if you need a ballpark rate to strive for, we do have an answer – sort of.
“My general answer is, ‘Well, what is your audience retention now?’ Rob asks. "If you say it’s currently 30%, I say, ‘OK, that is your benchmark.’ What you need to aim for is an audience retention of, let’s say, 35%. If you increase it from 30% to 35%, that’s like a 20% increase. And then you move on to the next step: Forty percent.”
What happens in the first 30 seconds of your video is critical. Many creators focus on the meat of their content – the sections where they give the most value to viewers. But if people aren’t satisfied at the beginning of the video, they will click away to watch something else. And if they click away, your audience retention rate takes a massive hit.
Read More: Growing a YouTube Channel - 4 Things Creators Overlook
“When you look at your retention graph, it starts at 100% and rapidly drops down until it stabilizes a little bit,” Dan says. “On a lot of graphs I’ve seen, it’s this steady trickling down as the video goes on. We know if people are leaving in less than one second of a video, there’s a good chance we’re never getting them back.”
So what’s happening in the first 30 seconds? More than anything, viewers are deciding if they’re in the right corner of YouTube. They’re determining whether the video matches what they saw in the title and thumbnail.
Viewer drop-off is unavoidable, but there are plenty of ways to decrease it. You can practice getting to the point of your video faster or using pattern interrupters, like images, audio, and different camera angles.
Lydia Sweatt is a writer, bookworm, and bass guitar enthusiast. When she goes outside, a bicycle goes with her.
