YouTube content creators rely on building an audience to earn money through advertisements. They cannot see their actual audience, so they must imagine who their viewers are and tailor their content accordingly. Engaging with viewers through comments and responses helps turn them into fans more likely to watch future videos. YouTube provides metrics for creators to measure engagement and attention over time. Increased attention through higher retention rates leads to better search rankings and more views, translating to greater advertising revenue for creators.

1. YOUTUBE
AND THE IMPORTANCE OF AUDIENCE
ATTENTION

2. VIDEO IS IMPORTANT!
• According to Richard D. Waters and Paul M. Jones, verbal,
vocal and visual communication are combined in video
content. These messages reach the audience on multiple
communication fronts.
• About half the adults in the US have at some point in their
lives viewed video online.

3. THE YOUTUBE GIANT
• One of the most popular places to watch video online is
YouTube.
• YouTube was started in 2005, and since then has grown
immensely.
• YouTube users watch 4 billion hours of video content each
month.

4. MAKING MONEY
FROM YOUTUBE
• In May 2007, YouTube launched its partner program.
• With the partner program, content creators on YouTube
gained the capability to earn money from their videos via
ad revenue.
• The more people view the advertisements, the more
money a content creator would earn.
• This means that more viewers= more $$$

5. THE
IMAGINED
AUDIENCE
YOUTUBE AND THE IMPORTANCE OF AUDIENCE
ATTENTION

6. THE IMAGINED
AUDIENCE
• According to Eden Litt, “The imagined audience is the
mental conceptualization of the people with whom we are
communicating, our audience.”
• When face-to-face communication is not possible, an
individual will depend more on their imagination to
determine whom exactly they might be addressing.

7. THE IMAGINED
AUDIENCE AND
YOUTUBE
• How does the imagined audience relate to YouTube?
• YouTube content creators don’t directly see their
audience, they don’t know exactly who they’re addressing.
• Content creators will be more successful if they tailor their
content to suit the wants/needs of their viewers.
• Content creators need to somehow find a way to
accurately imagine what their audience looks like.

8. RISKS OF THE
IMAGINED AUDIENCE
• If the creator doesn’t accurately identify their imagined
audience, there could be consequences.
• The material just might not hit the mark, or at worst it
could be offensive.
• Either way, less people will end up watching the content,
which means less money earned via ad revenue.

9. ENGAGEMENT
WITH THE
AUDIENCE
YOUTUBE AND THE IMPORTANCE OF AUDIENCE
ATTENTION

10. ENGAGING WITH FANS
• To earn money by making videos on YouTube, content
creators need to have an audience.
• There are many different ways content creators could get
viewers, but the most popular and most successful is
engaging with the audience.
• By turning the audience members into “fans” of a creator,
there is a higher chance those people will return to the
channel to view more videos.

11. HOW TO MEASURE
ENGAGEMENT
• YouTube offers ways to measure engagement directly in
their website.
• Content creators can view how many people viewed,
commented, liked or disliked, how many shares the video
got and how many people subscribed after watching the
video.

12. AUDIENCE
ATTENTION
YOUTUBE AND THE IMPORTANCE OF AUDIENCE
ATTENTION

13. WATCH TIME AND
SEARCH RANKINGS
• In 2012, YouTube optimized its search results to give
higher page rankings to videos with higher audience
retention rates.
• Before this change, search rankings were based on
number of views, which was a problem because people
would use misleading titles/thumbnails to get views.
• Now the content creator has to create videos that the
audience will keep watching as long as possible, ideally
completely to the end of the video.

14. RETENTION METRICS
• Like many other metrics, YouTube also made the audience
retention metric available for content creators to use.
• Content creators can view two types of audience
retention:
• Absolute retention: averages out view length for that
specific video.
• Relative retention: compares time watched to other videos
that are similar in length.

15. RESEARCH
QUESTIONS:
RQ1: How do content creators know who
they’re addressing and how do they modify
their message to reach that audience?
RQ2: What methods do content creators on
YouTube use to communicate with their
audience via social media and how effective is
it/how does it help them?
RQ3: What effect does the amount of time
audiences give attention to YouTube videos
have on the content creator?

16. METHODOLOGY:
• Searched for scholarly journal articles via Academic
Search Complete.
• YouTube also provides a lot of information about metrics
in their help guides, and those articles provided insights
to the research.
• Online data comparison tools, such as Klout were used to
compare the social media success of different online
content creators/celebrities.

17. RQ1: HOW DO CONTENT CREATORS
KNOW WHO THEY’RE ADDRESSING AND
HOW DO THEY MODIFY THEIR MESSAGE
TO REACH THAT AUDIENCE?
• Content Creators can view demographic reports directly
on the YouTube website. These reports will give the
creator an idea of the age, gender distribution, and
locations of viewers.
• If content creators want more specific results, they can
use their own surveys separate from YouTube, where
viewers can voluntarily provide more information. The
main downside is that not every viewer, perhaps not even
a lot of viewers, will respond to these surveys.

18. RQ2: WHAT METHODS DO CONTENT
CREATORS ON YOUTUBE USE TO
COMMUNICATE WITH THEIR AUDIENCE
VIA SOCIAL MEDIA AND HOW EFFECTIVE
IS IT/HOW DOES IT HELP THEM?
• Content creators can use many social media platforms to
communicate with their audiences, even ones outside of
YouTube such as twitter, tumblr and Facebook.
• An easy way to compare social media success is to look
at the “Klout” score.
• The Klout score will look at many different social media
platforms and give a number score that makes it easy to
compare content creators to each other. The higher the
score, supposedly the more successful the social media
campaign.

19. RQ3: WHAT EFFECT DOES THE AMOUNT
OF TIME AUDIENCES GIVE ATTENTION
TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS HAVE ON THE
CONTENT CREATOR?
• YouTube content creators can view their audience
retention metrics in their YouTube accounts.
• Unfortunately, this metric is kept private to the individual
content creators, unlike subscription numbers, page views
and likes and dislikes.

20. CONCLUSIONS
Overall it appears that content creators stand to benefit from
being present and active on more social media platforms than
YouTube alone.
Fan interaction could increase audience retention.
Increased audience retention means higher rankings in the
YouTube search results.
Higher rankings in the search results=more views.
More views=more advertising revenue earned for the content
creator.

21. LIMITATIONS
• Main limitation was that much of the data/metrics held on
YouTube is private to individual YouTube content creators.
• YouTube is also a visual medium, so what makes a
successful “YouTuber” can sometimes be more qualitative
than quantitative. It’s hard to reduce a video down to
numbers.
• It would be useful if NodeXL could have been utilized for
YouTube like it can be for Twitter.

22. POSSIBLE FUTURE
RESEARCH
• More in-depth research on specific popular content
creators. Track those content creators over time and look
how much they use social media, compare their success
to other content creators that make similar content but
use less/more social media.

23. THE END