SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

In this episode, Tom Antion focuses on "Watch Time," a key metric for YouTube creators. Watch time, also referred to as audience retention, measures how long viewers stay engaged with a video. This metric is crucial because platforms like YouTube reward creators with more visibility for keeping viewers engaged longer, which helps them sell more ads.
Key Takeaways:
1. Understanding Watch Time:
o Watch time can be both total and percentage-based.
o Example: For a 4-minute video, if someone watches 2 minutes, the watch time percentage is 50%. However, a shorter 2-minute video watched in full achieves 100%.
2. Practical Tips to Boost Watch Time:
o End Videos Abruptly: Avoid long sign-offs, as viewers tend to leave early, reducing watch time percentage. Do "subscribe/like" prompts earlier in the video.
o Hooks at the Start: Engage viewers in the first few seconds to encourage them to stay longer.
o End Screens: Use them strategically to guide viewers to other videos on your channel, boosting overall watch time.
o Inline Players: With YouTube's hover-preview feature, capturing attention early becomes even more critical.
3. Resources for More Tips:
o Episode 882: Offers 16 detailed tips to increase watch time.
o Episode 880: Focuses on using end screens effectively.
Additional Resources:
• Automation eBook: Available at screwthecommute.com/automatefree.
• Tom's School: Visit IMTCVA.org for digital marketing training.
• Mentor Program: Learn more at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com.
Closing:
Tom encourages listeners to apply these tips, review past episodes for deeper insights, and stay tuned for future content.

===

Episode 949 – Watch Time
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 949 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about Watch Time. And this is part of my YouTube series where we give you little short tips on what you can do to improve your YouTube channel, and some of them can really make a big, big difference. So this is 949. Watch time and hope you didn't miss episode 948. That was playlist that can really increase your watch time and views and everything else. Now let's see. Pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my school at IMTCVA.org. It's the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world.

[00:01:11] All right. Another term they use for watch time is audience retention. See, all the social media wants you to keep people on longer so that they can sell more ad space. That's the bottom line on all this stuff. And so they reward you for increasing your watch time. In other words, if you're keeping people on longer, they're going to reward you by showing your video to more people. That's kind of how it works. And also, a thing you want to pay attention to is percentage of watch time. So I'll give you an example here. If you had a four minute video and somebody watched two minutes, that would be a 50% watch time.

[00:01:58] All right. But if the video was two minutes and they watched all two minutes, that's 100% watch time. This is also I've did I've done something in the past about the value of ending your videos abruptly. And what that does is that increases your percentage of watch time, because I know everybody here has heard videos or watched videos where they say, okay, well, you know, now it's the end of the video. So, uh, you know, subscribe, like. It helps us out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And people know that the content is gone and so they leave and that reduces your percentage of watch time. So you probably want to do your subscribe like thing earlier in the video, and then do the content and then end the content abruptly. And that'll increase your percentage of watch time. Now you can actually get more than 100% watch time. And this goes to another tip we have. And I'm going to give you an episode that has 16 tips to increase your watch time. That's episode 882. And anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. That was 882 and that's got 16 tips to increase your watch time. And also you probably want to do 880, which is end screens.

[00:03:18] That's where your your video leads people to another video of yours. You know it could be somebody else's video too. So you want to control that anyway. Your percentage of watch time is important and your overall watch time is important. So and also nowadays they have this thing called an inline player, where you can hover your mouse over a thumbnail on YouTube and it starts playing the video. Well, that apparently from the sources I have say that increases your watch time, but you want to do something on that in that first few seconds called a hook to get them to want to watch the whole thing and then do things in the video to get them to stay to the end. And I've got videos on that too. So anyway, that's the importance of watch time. You'll be distributed much heavier if you keep people on longer, but I highly suggest you you watch episode or listen to episode 882 and take notes on it, because it's got 16 tips to increase your watch time and it's really going to help you overall. All right. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my school I talked to you about earlier and my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. And I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.