YouTube Creators! Check Out These Exciting New Features!
YouTube’s always been a popular platform for video creators and consumers – and now its rolling out a range of new features that its over 2 billion monthly users are going to enjoy.
First up – more robust analytics about the most important time in a video’s life cycle: the first 24 hours.
This was never available to creators previously, who had to rely on a video’s public view count to see if it’s resonating well with their subscribers and other viewers on YouTube.
Now, it can be accessed in the video analytics section of the platform’s creator studio. To retrieve this data, creators can select “First 24 hours” from the date picker in the top right-hand corner.
Along with providing creators with the ability to analyse the total watch time accumulated by a video in its first 24 hours, the report will also show how many subscribers have been gained or lost during that time, and how much revenue a creator earned if the video is monetized.
It also allows them to compare data of two videos side-by-side, which will prove to be useful to creators interesting in exploring their content’s evolution. However, this option is only available for videos published after 2019, and it isn’t available for live-streams.
Next up, an enhanced hashtag search feature that provides a full-page display of YouTube videos that include a person’s chosen tag, along with usage insights, all on one screen.
According to their official blog: “We’ve recently made an update to the way we group content together and help you discover videos through hashtags. Previously if you searched for a hashtag or clicked on a hashtag on YouTube, you’d see a combination of content using the hashtag in the video as well as other related content. Starting today, anyone searching for a specific hashtag on YouTube, either the desktop or mobile app, will see a new dedicated page that only contains videos with the hashtag, which are sorted to keep the best videos at the top. You can also navigate to these pages by clicking into any automatically linked hashtag you see on YouTube.”
This is available on both mobile and desktop, where anyone can explore the algorithmically-curated array of top videos for any specific hashtag being searched. These are further indexed by popularity, the number of videos that used the hashtag, and how many channels have used it in their videos.
It’s a good guide for creators to see what’s working and how they can potential incorporate keywords, titles, and hashtags from the most popular videos on the hashtag page.
The third, and final new feature, that YouTube is rolling out is one that could have interesting results for creators selling physical products as well as advertiser who do so too.
As reported in BGR.IN, a shopping bag icon will be added on the bottom left corner of the monetised video, which viewers can click on to see a list of featured products as well as explore more information about each product including related videos, and purchase options. The feature is currently live for only for users in the US on iOS, Android, and desktop.
It’s surprising that its taken YouTube this long to jump on the in-platform shopping wagon – Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have already rolled their versions of this feature – given that it’s an in-demand platfrom for advertisers and brands across different market segments.
Google, YouTube’s parent company, is already investing resources into enhancing the shopping experience on Google Search in an apparent bid to take on Amazon. Only time will tell whether Google, YouTube, or both platforms will be able to catch up.