YouTube Says That an Increasing Number of Viewers are Watching Videos at Faster Playback Speeds

Do you ever watch YouTube videos at faster than normal speed?

As it turns out, a lot of people do. According to YouTube, viewers “save an average of almost 900 years of video time every day” because they watch videos more quickly.

As explained by YouTube:

“YouTube currently supports watching at 0.25x, 0.5x, 0.75x, Normal (the default), 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, and 2x. As you can imagine, most people watch on the default speed, but we found that when people use this feature, the vast majority of the time they choose to watch a little bit faster – in fact, this feature was used to speed up content more than 85% of the time.”

YouTube says that 1.5x speed is the most commonly used alternative, followed by 2x as a close second and 1.25x at third.

“And for the perfectionists who like custom speeds, 1.1x was the most used speed. Just a little faster, but not too much.”

Additionally, YouTube adds that playback rates generally increase throughout the day.

“In the morning, starting at 6am, playback speeds weren’t used as often, but users started to dabble with faster speeds as their day progressed. There was a slight dip in usage around dinnertime, between 7pm and 8pm, before picking up again later in the evening. Looking at usage of 1.5x speed, users watching videos on 1.5x started spiking between 9pm and 1am in their respective time zones.”

That is reasonable. There is hardly ever a moment in our always-on, always-connected world when someone isn’t absorbing media material of some kind, whether it be for their ears, eyes, or both.

The continual barrage of information has already changed how we consume it, with individuals becoming more accustomed to being able to skip ahead and video content being increasingly brief in order to match audience attention spans.

Ranking Your videos on YouTube Is really hard especially if you are new to YouTube.

Faster playback choices also make sense in this situation since people are always attempting to watch and respond to more and more things, and speeding up that process can enable even more cramming and keep up with changing trends.

The fact that so many people are watching video replay with chipmunk-like voices may seem a little unusual, but in reality, nobody has time to wait any longer since they often don’t have to. This is a significant factor for brands.

Although playback speed variability cannot be considered when creating material, there may be inventive methods to manipulate playback rates to better cater to this behavioral shift.

Perhaps speed up or slow down certain parts of your own presentation to draw the audience’s attention. You may also take into account artistic styles that skew toward variable speeds, such as stop motion, which could alter in accordance with varied pace choices.

There isn’t a whole lot you can do to directly connect this with better, but it is important to take into account how limited people’s attention spans are these days and how they will likely want to skip ahead, scan, and move through anything that doesn’t immediately capture them.

In other words, the risks of dull material need to be more obvious to you than before. It may be worthwhile to test your presentation with your children or other young people to check whether they become bored throughout it. What interests you may not be as exciting to your audience.

Of course, some of it will be pertinent to the subject, but the more you can identify the lulls in your campaigns, the more you can capitalize on these behavioral changes.

YouTube Ranking factors are similar to Google search ranking factors

Source: Socialmediatoday