By now everyone has likely heard of Big Data. Data is everywhere and is rich with information to help take the guessing game out of marketing. Data helps you target ads, tells you how your website is doing, and can even give you some important stats about your marketing tactics, including video.

Consider this one example by Wistia. They were very proud of a new testimonial video on their site, but what they didn’t realize was that audience engagement was pretty low, especially per their average. And, because of how they constructed the content in the video, 40% of their viewers had already dropped off even before the testimonial mentioned the company name. Not ideal for a testimonial video.

The good news: You don’t necessarily have just one shot with video. By studying the data their analytics program offered, Wistia was able to draw conclusions about why the first version wasn’t all they had originally intended. They reconstructed the video, which increased their audience engagement by 10%, and they positioned information about Wistia in those initial, crucial 15-20 seconds. After all, it is a testimonial video, those watching the video want to learn about how awesome Wistia is, not their clients.

With video analytics, it is important to look beyond the webpage views. Just because the page with your video was viewed thousands of times, doesn’t mean your video was clicked and watched each time the page was loaded. Longtail Video recommends at least these metrics when looking for video analytic providers:

1)   Consider page views vs. video views. This will tell you how attractive your video is to your audience (are they watching it?) and how well it is positioned on the page.

2)   Assess the “hours viewed.” If you have 20 views of your three-minute video resulting in 15 minutes viewed, then the average viewer is only making it 45 seconds into your video. Like Wistia, this metric may help you in reorganizing your content so you don’t lose viewers before you get to the meaty information.

3)   Analyze the audience engagement. By looking at a “by-the-second” breakdown of viewers, you’ll be able to see any trends in where people are dropping off. This is a very important metric as it tells you what percentage of your viewers watched the video in its entirety. The chart will also be able to show you which parts of your video people go back and replayed.

You put a lot of hard work into that video, make sure you’re maximizing its potential by analyzing the data and editing the video accordingly.

Black Tent Video Production
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