ASK & DISCUSS
INDEXA YouTube lesson learned...
9 years, 4 months ago - Benjamin Kent
I recently learned an important YouTube/online content lesson that I thought I'd better share with the community and hopefully save someone else from making the same mistake!
The other day I had one of my comedy sketches featured on a large news website - 'hooray, finally!', I thought as I avidly watched the YouTube stats, waiting for the views to roll in. Except whilst the activity on the news site implied pretty substantial footfall, those views just weren't appearing. By the end of the first day we'd had less views than the article had shares, which made no sense whatsoever.
A day later with still no substantial views, I found the nugget of information that made all the difference and learned a valuable lesson for any of us making online content:
If someone embeds your video, make sure they TURN AUTOPLAY OFF, otherwise you will NOT be credited with the views.
For what it's worth, I should point out that I absolutely don't think the news site did this on purpose as they'd have had very little to gain by it and fixed it as soon as we pointed it out. Nevertheless, I'd guess we might've lost tens of thousands of views in the meantime.
If anyone else has discovered similar pitfalls, or just has some great advice about negotiating the world of online content, please do share them here!
Cheers,
Ben
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9 years, 4 months ago - Marlom Tander
And where can we see this video? be not shy, post a link :-)
Response from 9 years, 4 months ago - Marlom Tander SHOW
9 years, 4 months ago - Benjamin Kent
Here you go!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEfgkaliCe4
If you could just watch it between 30 and 60 thousand times, that should make up the difference by my most recent calculations ;)
Response from 9 years, 4 months ago - Benjamin Kent SHOW
9 years, 4 months ago - Simon DaVison
Thanks for the tip. We had a similar experience on facebook. A short comedy song was shared by another page and took on their identity. They got 100k views, we got 16k. Still don't understand how they took it over. We also put it on YouTube - embedded on Facebook - only 3k views. Because facebook deliberately make the embedded video post ugly. It's a constantly re-adjusting minefield folks!
Here's our vid on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1etJRvXCKc
Response from 9 years, 4 months ago - Simon DaVison SHOW
9 years, 4 months ago - John Owen
There's a whole thing about how Facebook are basically just trying to get high video views and don't care if other people set up pages that steal other peoples videos. DCMA them if you see it happen. Interesting video about the whole thing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q
Response from 9 years, 4 months ago - John Owen SHOW
9 years, 4 months ago - Simon DaVison
Just saw your post - Thanks. Damn facebook! Odd to think that YouTube are the good guys. I'm sure that's not right. So the message is - Facebook completely ignore the rules of copyright and everyone has to shame them into changing.
Response from 9 years, 4 months ago - Simon DaVison SHOW
9 years, 4 months ago - inka stafrace
Thank you for this information but I do not really understand. Do I the content provider turn AutoPlay Off or does the embedder turn AutoPlay OfF and if it is the latter where is the AutoPlay Off option to turn it off from please, for the embedded?
EG: To embed your video the code is :
How would the embedder turn AutoPlay Off, please?
Response from 9 years, 4 months ago - inka stafrace SHOW
9 years, 4 months ago - Benjamin Kent
As I understand it the autoplay option is set in the embed code, so there's nothing the content provider can do about it (I think they embedder just adds '?autoplay=1' to the end of the embed code)
So if someone does it with your video, your only option is to ask them to change it.
Response from 9 years, 4 months ago - Benjamin Kent SHOW
9 years, 4 months ago - John Owen
Does seem a bit weird that YouTube does this.. one way around it but it does not help that much is to disable embeding of your video. At least then you'll get the view counts.
Response from 9 years, 4 months ago - John Owen SHOW
9 years, 4 months ago - Benjamin Kent
I guess YouTube's just trying to keep up with Facebook. Thing is, they've got completely different business models - Facebook charges people to boost their posts and so it's in their interest to overinflate viewing figures, whereas YouTube pays per view, so it's the last thing they want to do.
The problem with disabling embedding is you're making it less attractive for people to share. Really YouTube should just get rid of the autoplay feature.
Response from 9 years, 4 months ago - Benjamin Kent SHOW