
If viewers don't enjoy your videos, your average view duration will be poor. This metric is directly based on viewer feedback. Why did viewers do this? They did this because of the misleading titles and thumbnails.Īs a content creator on YouTube, you should do everything you can to maximize your average view duration. Meaning, viewers clicked on a video, watched it for a few seconds, and clicked off. Many content creators used to use misleading titles and thumbnails to get views, but most of the views were low-quality. In recent years, this metric has become more important. YouTube wants to show high-quality videos to viewers, so having a good average view duration is crucial for success. The job of this metric is to help YouTube determine which videos are being positively received by viewers, and which videos are not. While average view duration and audience retention seem to be the same thing, they are different and shouldn't be viewed as being the same thing.Īverage view duration is calculated by dividing the total watch time or watch hours of a video by the total number of views. What Does Average View Duration Mean on YouTubeīefore we go any further, we must answer the question: What does average view duration mean on YouTube? Many people get average view duration and audience retention confused. Every video is different, but improvements do exist that have been proven to be beneficial for increasing viewer duration across the board. Knowing this, improvements to videos themselves often need to be made. This means that less engaging videos tend to have a low average view duration.

Ideally, viewers should make it through at least 50% of a video, but longer would be even better.Īverage view duration is calculated as a result of viewer feedback.

Every content creator on YouTube should try to create the best videos possible to encourage viewers to watch their videos for longer durations. But what is a good average view duration on YouTube, and how can you make sure yours is good?Īs with a lot of things, a solid answer cannot be given when asked what a good YouTube average view duration is. If you have a bad average view duration, your videos will struggle to get the traffic you want them to get. Over the years, average view duration has become a more important metric.
