Building on the success of YouTube Search Insights, a keyword research feature released last year, the video-sharing platform is piloting three new features in its Analytics Research tab.
New features, viewing interests, viewing activity, and personalized insights are intended to help creators identify areas of interest to their audience.
The announcement was made via video on YouTube Creator Insider Launched in 2017 to provide weekly updates from the site creator’s technical team.
New features expand upon content development insights
Search Insights was launched with the goal of helping creators develop content around potential topics of interest to their audience. It has received a positive response, with “80% of creators in the experiment expressing satisfaction with the tool,” Pierce Volucci, YouTube’s senior product manager, said in the video.
While YouTube has been working on expanding the feature to more languages and markets, Search Insights currently only provides information about what viewers are searching for.
The new features announced, interest viewing, activity viewing, and personalized insights, will help creators find new and relevant areas that might interest their viewers.
The Interests watch is intended to help creators identify the top, emerging, or recent videos within a topic. This is intended to allow them to take advantage of current popular topics and videos.
Watch activity will show what types of content the creator’s audience is watching. This can be used to gauge interest in relevant types of content.
Custom Insights will be tailored to the creator’s channel, providing insights into the unique interests of their audience or their saved videos. The save feature, which was initially only available on desktop but is now in the mobile app as well, uses this as an indication of interests.
“Creators often inspire videos in neighboring areas, so we highlight related topics or areas adjacent to existing content,” Volucci said in the video.
The new features are just the beginning of the planned improvements
YouTube remains forward-looking in its approach to analytics and is constantly looking for new ways to help creators. If this new feature trial like the previous search analytics update is successful, YouTube will aim to roll it out to a wider audience.
“These are just some of the improvements we’re considering in terms of the future of content research,” Volucci said in the video. “We hope to run this experiment for a limited time, gather all of your feedback and return the feature to a wider group of creators.”
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