Dear YouTubers,
Consistently in the YouTube Analytics of my videos, the 'average percentage viewed' of a video always gives a lower percentage than you would conclude from that video's audience retention graph. This is something that I have been wondering/bothering about for a long time, ever since I started youtube 3 years ago. Let me show you the audience retention data of one of my video's:
The playhead I located in the retention graph at the point where the audience retention drops under 26.2% (the given average percentage viewed). At this point, you can clearly see that the line over the most part of the graph (left from playhead) is running relatively higher compared to where the line goes under this point (right from the playhead). The line actually barely goes under the 26.2%, so based on the retention graph the given ''average percentage viewed'' should clearly be significantly higher than 26.2%.
To accurately prove this and calculate the percentage the graph represents, I cropped out the graph section (0-100%) and colored the surface under the middle of the graph line blue (viewers watching) and above the line black. And used a color counter to calculate the exact amount of percentage the graph would show.
The percentage of blue-colored pixels in the image turns out to be 35.17% (graph surface precentage of watching viewers), significantly higher than the given 26.2%. A difference we could already see just by looking at the retention graph. This is quite a significant difference and I have been seeing this in the analytics of all of my videos really. So at least in my analytics, either one of the two must be off. Do you guys see similar differences between the graph and the given percentage? And which of two would better represent how much your viewers actually watch? I would think the retention graph, but that means that the given ''average percentage watched'' on all my videos is in reality higher than the analytics tell me. Let me know your thoughts and hopefully YouTube can fix this! All the best!
Consistently in the YouTube Analytics of my videos, the 'average percentage viewed' of a video always gives a lower percentage than you would conclude from that video's audience retention graph. This is something that I have been wondering/bothering about for a long time, ever since I started youtube 3 years ago. Let me show you the audience retention data of one of my video's:
The playhead I located in the retention graph at the point where the audience retention drops under 26.2% (the given average percentage viewed). At this point, you can clearly see that the line over the most part of the graph (left from playhead) is running relatively higher compared to where the line goes under this point (right from the playhead). The line actually barely goes under the 26.2%, so based on the retention graph the given ''average percentage viewed'' should clearly be significantly higher than 26.2%.
To accurately prove this and calculate the percentage the graph represents, I cropped out the graph section (0-100%) and colored the surface under the middle of the graph line blue (viewers watching) and above the line black. And used a color counter to calculate the exact amount of percentage the graph would show.
The percentage of blue-colored pixels in the image turns out to be 35.17% (graph surface precentage of watching viewers), significantly higher than the given 26.2%. A difference we could already see just by looking at the retention graph. This is quite a significant difference and I have been seeing this in the analytics of all of my videos really. So at least in my analytics, either one of the two must be off. Do you guys see similar differences between the graph and the given percentage? And which of two would better represent how much your viewers actually watch? I would think the retention graph, but that means that the given ''average percentage watched'' on all my videos is in reality higher than the analytics tell me. Let me know your thoughts and hopefully YouTube can fix this! All the best!
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