YouTube Views Are Down, Analysis Says
YouTube Views Are Down, Analysis Says
Cecilia D'Anastasio December 23, 2016 11:30am
For months, YouTubers have complained that their view counts
are down. New data from the third-party stat tracker SocialBlade confirms what
YouTubers fear: viewership is lower “across the board.”
SocialBlade crunched some numbers for Kotaku and
determined that, since the first half of the year, YouTube views are now 5-7%
lower. Between July and September, that decrease was 10%. It’s pretty
significant.
SocialBlade Community Manager Danny Fratella explained
over e-mail how he put together the graph:
“I started by pulling daily view/sub growth data from
January 1, 2016 - November 30, 2016 for every channel with more than 10 million
subscribers. From there, I weeded out channels that weren’t actually YouTube
personalities; accounts managed by record labels (like VEVO channels) and
television studios (like The Ellen Show), primarily. That left us with 49 of
the biggest channels on YouTube.”
SocialBlade says their metrics are reliable. They pull
data directly from YouTube’s API. But over Twitter on Monday, YouTube accused
some third party apps of poorly representing subscriber activity, pointing
directly to SocialBlade. SocialBlade fired back that they don’t make up data,
adding that “our data is only as good as what we’re able to get from you:).”
It’s worth noting that YouTube’s view-counting algorithm
is unknown because it’s proprietary. But Fratella says “we know that watch time
plays a role, but there are likely many other metrics taken into account.”
Why YouTube views have gone down is unclear, but some
good theories are floating around. Fratella pointed to two potential causes:
view audits and altered video-promoting algorithms. During view audits,
YouTubers don’t actually lose views.
YouTube is removing botted or invalid playbacks from the
view count. This happens all at once in a sort of purge—something YouTube has
explained publicly. But now that YouTubers have tools like SocialBlade to more
rigorously moderate their data, they may be noticing these purges more,
Fratella suggested.
He added that SocialBlade doesn’t see view counts purged
as often as subscriber counts—the main complaint going around YouTube
communities. Although YouTubers have widely complained that fans are now
randomly unsubscribed from their channels, YouTube and SocialBlade both told me
that they’ve noticed nothing out of the ordinary in subscription data.
YouTube’s video-promoting algorithm may also play a role
in an apparent decreased viewership. What videos the platform draws more eyes
to reflects their philosophy on what videos should go viral. Fratella directed
me to a YouTube video by Derek Muller (Veritasium) in which he speculates on
why more widely distributed video promotion could affect views. So, for
example, when a channel with millions of subscribers regularly puts out a
video, the latest of those videos may not deserve to go as viral as some guy’s
rapidly-shared cellphone video of a breaking news event.
For more on that:
Why views are 5-7% lower across the board may have
nothing to do with audits or promotion algorithms. It may be a ghost, or the
hand of God. Who knows? With SocialBlade’s stats, the decrease at least feels
more tangible. The mysterious subscription declines, however, are still
mysterious.
*The article’s original headline read, “YouTube Views Are
Down Across The Board, Analysis Says.”
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