YouTube Question Should we avoid End Screens to raise Audience Retention Rate?

[martycg15]

Would eliminating the use of end screens be advantageous in raising our audience retention rate albeit a small bump up?

 

[MuhammaRashedulIslam]

In some cases it's good and in some case it will not good

 

[SILTHW]

There are two completely opposite schools of thought. Many people don't "wrap up" their video and just go straight to end screen. They get good retention but more importantly see an uptick in people interacting with their end screen content and staying on their channel longer. Others close with a "call to action" - e.g. "like and subscribe" and do well with that.

Only way to know what will work for you and your niche is to try it. I would start with the first option above, as it seems to be more common now.

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

Absolutely Not! While I shorten mine to around 8 seconds in order to accommodate this retention concern you are missing out on something far greater than a few seconds of watch time if you eliminate your endscreens... studio time.

One of the metrics that YouTube uses to rate the performance of a video is studio time. You are not privvy to this as it is not shown in analytics, but a video gets credit for how much watch time it garners from viewers even after the video is no longer playing. This is referred to as Studio Time, though it is a rarely discussed and fairly secret portion of YouTube's Search and Discovery systems (the 'algorithm').

So for example let's look at this scenario. You have two ten minute videos. They both have equal 80% retention, but one has end screens to another ten-minute video that gets 80% retention and the other has no end screens.

The first video not only gets credit for the 8 minutes of watch time, it also gets credit for a total of 16 minutes of studio time. Because that first video is syphoning views to another video it is keeping viewers on platform and interested in the overall topic at hand, and it will be rewarded with more impressions as a result.

 

[BraveStar]

On top of all this great advice you've been given, I'll add this. I have been told before never to make it obvious when my video is ending. The moment you do that your viewers are automatically triggered to move on to the next video and odds are it may not necessarily be one of yours because you triggered it before it reached the endscreen. Doing the like and subscribe and see you next time during the endscreen will not only give you a chance to say those things but also show your logo for subscribing and the next video you can suggest for them to watch.

All in all, just don't make it obvious your video is ending. That's another reason the progress bar disappears, so not only it's not in the way but also so the viewer doesn't know when the video is ending and doesn't jump to the next one before the end.

 

[Aarya]

May Be, But I don't think so

 

[Damon]

Na, dude! Always throw up some kind of end screen. Anything to help people stay on platform. Why have them go to someone else's video when they could be watching your videos?

 

[The Kitchen Gamer]

I'd say don't get rid of your end screen as you'll have people that watch your whole video and then they'll just leave and as a result not be driven to other content which you create.