In ongoing efforts to increase the profitability of YouTube's popular videos, the company has today gone live with video HotSpots, a new tool that measures a video’s popularity on a second by second basis. From the Google blog:
In its post, YouTube then skewers the choerographic stylings of Associate Product Marketing Manager Michael Rucker dancing with Soulja Boy to demonstrate the effectiveness of its new product.
By placing a graph alongside individual YouTube videos, HotSpots determines when particular moments of video are “hot” or “cold,"
comparing the video's abandonment rate to other videos on YouTube of the same length. Any YouTube user can see when people drop off from their video, when they fast forward, and when they are most engaged.
The new feature “helps advertisers test creatives by seeing how users respond and what parts of ads keep viewers,” a YouTube spokesperson tells
Wired.com.
Users can determine the popularity of their content and adjust future videos to take advantage of what they have learned about drop off rates and popularity: “A number of users have figured out how to increase their traffic by large degrees and doubled their number of views by making simple changes."
