Audience Retention Explained via Motorola's The Maker

Wednesday, 3 December 2014

Audience Retention Explained via Motorola's The Maker

Sometimes it's far easier to show than tell. On 25 Nov 2014, +Motorola Mobility uploaded Moto X - The Maker to YouTube.

7 dec 14 edit Motorola have uploaded twelve videos in the last week centred around the Moto 360 and the X.

What started out as one short post (when I spotted a high audience retention %) has now turned into a nice little study. From the dozen videos we have some fantastic retention numbers.

There are 1.8 million views so far - that's no real interest to me. Although, I'm sure it will be to Adrienne Hayes (Motorola's SVP, Marketing and Communications) or their agency who seem to have thrown over 50 staffers at a recent Motorola campaign.

The takeaway - short videos less than a minute do very well, they retain an audience. Maybe, if you had just one person, making a video in their spare room (like +Marques Brownlee) you would commision the thing to be 41 seconds long.

After all, Marques has already had a live Hangout with Dennis Woodside, CEO of Motorola (6 dec 13). To push the point, we all have free tools like Youtube, we all have a camera phone and can learn how to post edit a video.

All we really need is..

an idea what video to make
an idea of what the finished article may look like
and an idea where to find help, maybe from folks like me who post stuff

28 Dec 14 edit | the table below shows the jump from 1.8m views to 4 million (from 3 dec 14) yet still retaining average audience retention of 34 secs (86%) .. Since 3 Dec, the Motorola channel has uploaded 13 more videos.

Posts in the Audience Retention Series

3 Dec 14	Audience Retention Explained via Motorola's The Maker
2 Dec 14	Advanced YouTube Audience Retention for Creators
25 Nov 14	Martin Van Buren at 103%
24 Nov 14	Taylor Swift at 94%
11 Nov 14	Your Channel’s Learning Potential
25 Oct 14	YouTube Reveal Audience Retention
11 May 14	Message to YouTube Creators

3 dec 14 edit | From the 428,397 views, it's had an audience retention of 92%. The video is an idea 60 seconds long.

Title	Views	Average View	Total time	%
Moto. Vielfalt wählen.	1,832	00:43	00:59	73
Moto 360 - Golf	75,549	00:27	00:28	96
The Maker	2,505	00:42	01:00	70
Moto 360 - Holiday	86,934	00:25	00:26	96
El creador	2,884	00:24	00:30	80
The Maker	3,485	00:47	01:00	78
Moto 360 - Businessman	207,789	00:21	00:22	95
Moto 360 - Pianist	180,928	00:23	00:23	100
Moto 360 - Businessman	189,285	00:15	00:15	100
The Maker	398,275	00:54	01:00	90
The Maker	4,998	00:43	01:00	72
Moto X - The Maker	656,966	00:54	01:00	90
	1,811,430	00:34	00:41	87

Let's break that 92% down while understanding why people have watched till the very end.

Businessman and The Pianist at 100%

Looking at the elements of the 43 clips, we have a figurative tennis match where the viewer follows the rapidly moving ball across the net between Designer and Maker. This continues, with an average clip length if 1.398 secs. Where the last two slides are a balance.

I choose the tennis analogy as we humans will following a fast moving object, usually until we are told not not.

Remember, there are no words in this clip, just music, action and some comedy. It's a lot about good timing ie the colour change to bamboo. /edit Watch out for the 0.06 alarm, 0.21 conflict, 0.30 tension, 0.35 more tension leading to the 0.52 resolution and pay off - all very cool story telling.

Had there been a spoken script, it would've slowed down the flow and pace while probably extending the clip to maybe two and a half minutes - and if you do that, big risk you'll end up losing most of your audience.

All of you are capable of looking deeply at the slide and decide for yourself. What have I missed? /as always my door is open for discussion..

Edit 5 Dec 14 at 3.45pm Views and retention are as follows..