YouTube Measurement Follies
YouTube completely revamped their measurement metrics this week, much to the concern of the television industry which has spent the past decade dealing with its own measurement follies.
The new YouTube metrics, which count the sighting of just one frame as a “view”, are controversial with people who have spent their careers relying on Nielsen and metrics that relied on considerably longer watch times.
For the digital media crew, however, it was more “what took you so long?”
Meaning that Instagram and TikTok, YouTube’s main rivals, had been using that one frame metric for a while now and they saw YouTube as just bringing their own metrics in line.
Why It Matters
The old YouTube metric, the one that made a somewhat-longer-but-still-a-mystery amount of time into a “view” will now be the metric for “engagement.”
Meaning that existing creators of long form videos should see a nice boon as their view numbers shoot up and their engagement numbers hold steady, making them more attractive to advertisers.
Short form creators, the ones who more directly compete with TikTok and Instagram (or, more likely, are on all three platforms) will feel pressure to keep churning out new videos to keep those view and engagement numbers up.
Why? Because starting next February, Google is going to up the metrics needed for monetization. So that Shorts creators must maintain 10 million Shorts views every 90 days to continue earning Shorts revenue. Falling below that threshold and monetization stops.
New long form creators also face a burden as new creators will need 8,000 long form watch hours instead of 4,000 or 20 million Shorts views instead of 10 million to qualify for the YouTube Partner Program.
Whose metrics sound a whole lot like the United Mileage Plus program with its Premier Qualifying Points and Premier Qualifying Flights, but what do I know.
AI Slop producers are going to have to work harder at being engaging too, at least if they want to make any money.
They should initially see a view boost as suddenly all those people who click on the video and quickly click away will get counted.
The flip, of course, being that their engagement numbers should reflect that as well, with the delta between the two being noticeably wider than the delta between views and engagement on a human-made video.
Or, as our friend Claude might say, “Good distinction, and it’s the one that actually matters.”
Friend to friend, of course.
What YouTube seems to be doing here is helping to increase the amount of money other people (brands and agencies) are paying to creators, while making it harder for said creators to get their hands in its own piggy bank.
Pretty clever trick.
What You Need To Do About It
If you’re a long-term YouTuber and you’re making content that people watch, then you are the real winners here. You will see your view numbers go up and your engagement will stay strong. All of which means additional income from brands, if not from YouTube.
If you are a new creator and your focus is on Shorts, the key here is going to be lower production costs. That's because the new system seems to want you to keep churning out a steady array of content: 10 million views every 90 days.
Something to keep in mind as you’re figuring out what your muse looks like.
Finally, if you are an ad agency, do not get bamboozled by those “view numbers”: they are not the metrics you want to be using. What you want to be looking at is all that engagement. That is what matters.
If you are YouTube, well played. You've done a great job of standardizing the metrics, rewarding your best performers, and setting up the bar in such a way that you will be making more money and no one will really ever notice.
Except, of course, TVREV.
Theater Chains Now Pro Paramount-Warner
One of the main reasons California Attorney General Rob Bonta and his Gang of 12 are trying to stop the deal from happening is that they are worried about the movie industry and the impact that combining the Warner Bros and Paramount studios would have on everyone involved.
To quote from the actual filing, the merger would give them control of around 30% of major movie releases.
Which you’d think would concern the theater chains.
Only it doesn’t.
If anything, the opposite is happening as AMC, Regal and Cinemark are all on record asking Bonta to settle his lawsuit, citing the massive "uncertainty" that would impact the industry if the lawsuit were to drag on until next year.
Why It Matters
It is a similar argument to the one made by both the Directors Guild (DGA) and IATSE (the stagehands’ union)—that the lack of clarity caused by a trial that would not begin until Spring 2027 at the earliest would cause far more damage than figuring out a way to let the merger go through right away.
This is a valid point—that the damage caused by a full year of uncertainty would not easily be recouped should the merger somehow be halted next spring and that at some level, all these mergers are somehow inevitable in the face of the tech giants, so it's best to just get on with it and let them go through now.
There’s a counter-argument to that, though, that says there's a looming sense of uncertainty throughout the industry caused by the general lack of clarity around where streaming and media consumption in general is heading and if Zoomers will ever develop attention spans longer than 10 seconds.
So that it doesn’t really matter much if Bonta’s case keeps us on tenterhooks until next spring. You’re not really going to do much to resolve all that anxiety by halting the merger.
It’s all just that gloomy.
What You Need To Do About It
If you are Rob Bonta and you see the theater chains you imagined you were supporting are now looking to block you, then it’s time to reconsider strategy.
Maybe all this uncertainty is worse than a merger, especially if the earliest the uncertainty will resolve itself is next spring.
A lot can go wrong between now and then. So keep your head down and your chin up.
If you are working at Paramount or Warner Bros, this is a tough stretch. There are some people who can live with that sort of free-floating anxiety. I know I am not one of them. So more power to you if you can, and much support if you can’t.
Alan Wolk is co-founder and lead analyst at the consulting firm TV[R]EV. He is the author of the best-selling industry primer, Over The Top: How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry. Wolk frequently speaks about changes in the television industry, both at conferences and to anyone who’ll listen.
Week in Review is an opinion column. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of StreamTV Insider.