How to: Use Video Data to Experiment and Validate Strategy
In this ongoing series, I’ll walk you through tips and tricks for using Chartbeat editorial analytics tools and data to its full advantage — helping you connect data-driven actions to increased unique visitors, loyalty, and revenue.
Does your editorial strategy include video content? Did you know that video viewers who watch for a significant amount of time or watch multiple videos during their first visit, are significantly more likely to return and watch another video during the following 7 days?
Here at Chartbeat, we want to make sure we help you understand how your audience is connecting with your content at all times – no matter the platform, channel, or format.
Check out these three tips for enhancing your content strategy using your Chartbeat video analytics:
Identify successful videos
A video with a high number of starts and a low ad drop-off rate is a great money-maker. Not only are a significant number of people starting this video, but they’re also watching the pre-roll ad and sticking around for the actual content.
If engagement is high as well, you’ve got an all-star video and you should be promoting it as widely as possible.
Troubleshoot display and placement issues on high-performing pages
Curation matters as much as creation. Make sure you’re showing your video content the love it deserves by pairing it with relevant content and ensuring that you’re optimizing the user experience.
If a video has a low play rate, ask two questions:
- Does the video have a good thumbnail? If not, choose a more impactful still image.
- Is the video placed high enough on the page for readers to see the play button? If the scroll depth indicator is showing that most of the page’s visitors never see the video, move it up.
Monitor drop-off and completion rates for autoplay videos
No matter how well a video is performing in other areas, if it has a high ad drop-off percentage most people aren’t even getting to the real content – drastically reducing their chances of becoming a loyal viewer. If you see a high drop-off rate, flag the situation to your ad team.
Our Video Suite is tailored to help you not only understand how your videos are consumed, but also use that data to validate and enhance your larger content strategies. Remember that your Video Dashboard exists alongside the entire suit of Chartbeat tools, and many of the key video metrics like Watching Now and Engaged Time appear in the Real-Time Dashboard as well. Jump over there to quickly get more context around how your viewing audience compares to the rest of the readers on the page, or go to the actual page your video appears on and see firsthand how the video’s placement on the page relates to scroll depth.
Have any questions or curious about a specific topic you’d like me to cover? Reach out to me at jill@chartbeat.com or @tumbling_after on Twitter.