Following recent adjustments to YouTube’s reporting system between September 9th and 10th, Wizdeo has conducted an updated analysis of view counts and evaluated the practical capabilities of the YouTube Creator Partnerships (YCP) program.

Here is what creators and brand partners need to know about the updated view ratios, data access limitations, and how to adapt upcoming sponsorship deals.

Revised ratio: on average total views are 2 times higher than engaged views vs 1.4 times in previous study

Initial observations following the August 27th change estimated that public "Total Views" were on average 44% higher than "Engaged Views. However, YouTube updated its viewcount , total views are now on average 2.06x higher than engaged views on nonèkids channels.

 In other words, engaged views now represent 48% of total public views. This sharp increase underlines that public total view counts include a substantial volume of low-watch-time, non-engaged views. 

Engaged views ratio: significant variability across videos, creators, and in time

The ratio between total views and engaged views fluctuates across creators, across videos for a given creator, and even between different days for the same video. Without access to engaged views counts, engaged views won’t be able to be estimated based on one global ratio, or even on an average ratio per channel. 

Reporting engaged views on branded content deals is both necessary - since total views include loads of non-engaged views useless for brands - but a lot more complicated since they’re not visible in public anymore. Using past references in CPMs and  revenue per view means getting hold of engaged views per video. And CPM contracts - based on engaged views - face invoicing challenges, requiring creators to share YouTube Studio screenshots with brands and agencies to verify final figures.

Predicting 30-day engaged views for a future sponsored video has also become harder since the underlying data is harder to get at. Negotiations with creators must now incorporate higher variability factors into rate calculations and deal terms.

The YCP program helps, but generally doesn’t provide engaged views per video

The new YouTube Creator Partnerships (YCP) program delivers, for all creators which are part of the program,  channel level data , but does not provide a video breakdown of engaged views.

The only exception is when creators agree to provide video-level Brand Partner Access data, which means exposing private insight including video-level engaged views. But in this case, the creator also agrees to add amplification of the video. In practice the share of videos for which Brand Partner Access has been turned on is negligible. 

How Wizdeo helps brands navigate these changes

To help brands continue to have engaged views, Wizdeo is deploying a new estimation algorithm , which will be refined every month in order to estimate per-video engaged views for published videos, and of course adjust 30 day engaged views forecast for all creators. Our estimates will be based on engaged views data at the video level for creators which have given us their token, as well as channel-level engaged views data from creators in the YCP program

We’re also making sure that creators can share through our tool their engaged views per sponsored video, by agreeing to Brand-level Partner Access. 

We’ll keep you posted!