"Insight turns YouTube into one of the world's largest focus groups." (Source: Google Blog)If you have a YouTube account and you do upload video clips to it you may be interested in knowing that YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload, has been made accessible to all YouTube account holders who upload videos to the site.

Official demographics for viewers of the YouTube Robin Good channel - 5-2008

If you had not yet heard about it, YouTube now offers to all of its users a free video metrics and analytics service, which allows you to check traffic trends and statistics of your video clips on YouTube according to a number of variables which include world geographic area and relative popularity of the specific video clip you are interested in.

In essence, this new service, called YouTube Insight, gives you access to specific visual stats on the number of views per day your video received, where those viewers are in the world, and how popular your video is compared to other videos in a given period of time.

"For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks."

Here more details and a short introductory video from Google:

Overview

YouTube Insight is a free web-based tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account -- users, partners, and advertisers -- to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload.

YouTube Insight gives both publishers and advertisers an inside peek at the viewing trends of their videos on YouTube, and provides them with relevant distribution and delivery information that can help them increase video views and better target their specific audience traits.

Just to make a simple example, thanks to YouTube Insight you can now learn how different parts of your distributed identity on the web (via your Blog, Facebook or Twitter presence) is effective in driving traffic to your video content on YouTube.

Video publishers could also leverage this opportunity to reach out to form relationships with those sites who consistently point readers to their videos on YouTube.

Finally, since advertisers can now access reports detailing the search queries that lead viewers to their videos, they can make more informed decisions about the keywords and bids they select to appear on Google.com.

Key Metrics Offered

YouTube Insight video metrics show most popular videos for Robin Good channel

YouTube Insight video metrics show popularity of Robin Good's YouTube channel across different world regions (darker green more popular)

Viewing trends of Robin Good's YouTube

With YouTube Insight you can also see:

1. How often a video is viewed in different world geographic regions

2. How popular a video is relative to all videos in a market over a period of time

3. How much time it takes for a video to become popular

4. What happens to video views as popularity peaks

Some new metrics are also being rolled out now and will soon appear in your YouTube account as well. These include:

A discovery tab now shows how viewers found your video, whether by searching on YouTube or Google, browsing under "related videos", receiving a link to the video from an email or website, or watching it in an embedded player away from YouTube.

In this view you can also see a search results breakdown for YouTube and Google search queries that led to your video, as well as for the external websites driving traffic to your content. (Insight will show up to 50 inbound links.)

(You can find these new metrics under the "Discovery" tab within the Insight dashboard. Click on the "Insight" button under "Account > My Videos." )

Benefits of Using YouTube Insight

By using the YouTube Insight data, you can learn more about what works and what doesn't by doing a number of tests. Now that you have precise and detailed access to this data, you can gauge a lot better what factors may be influencing the most your successful videos.

By studying your video traffic trends you may also learn a great deal about which days and times may be most appropriate for posting or releasing your new clips. Though you may think this may have a marginal value, when you add up all of this factor and you plan for a strategic video viral campaign, each and every one of this factors has some tangible importance.

By knowing more you can better customize your video content, packaging and delivery to address the specific traits of your target audiences.

Where Do I See These Statistics on my YouTube Account?

Go to your "My Videos" page and then you will see an "Insight" button next to each one of your video clips.

Next to each one of your video clips you will find an extra button labeled "Insight", just like the one I am pointing at with my cursor here below:

By clicking on it you get to access the statistics for that specific video in a screen like this one:

To go and see all of your YouTube viewing trends you can also click first on your "Account" link. Once you are on your Account page scroll down to the bottom where you will see on the left a link to YouTube Insight.

Here is a screenshot:

More information:
YouTube Reveals Video Analytics Tool For All Users