New Ways of Conducting Market Research: Using YouTube Insights

The IDEA :

YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. More than 80 Million people visit Youtube every month . A large part of this traffic comes from India with more than 5 Million unique users in 2008 . However the power of this new social media has not been properly harnessed for the purpose of market research. Especially in India, YouTube Marketing and Research remains an almost unexplored terrain.

Now we find that market research is usually done to find a market segment or to find if the market would be responsive to a new product offering. In such a scenario YouTube offers a convenient and powerful tool to find consumer insights. My idea is that before a product is about to be launched make viral videos of the prototypes of the product being used. Then we can use the Insights tool provided by YouTube to find all the demographics that we want to unearth.

The source of this idea was IDEO. When they were asked to come up with a concept for a line of spas, instead of industry research and delivering a bound report to the client they went ahead and used ethnography and video prototyping. They created a rough video prototype of how the spa will look and burned them onto dozens of CDs and presented them to the clients. The video spread through the company and IDEO ended up getting the contract. Video prototyping turned out to be a quick and extremely visual way of expressing a new product or process offering.

Taking this idea forward, I figured that such video prototypes can also be used to gauge the response of the market to a new product. Video prototyping is not a costly affair and can quickly be done. By looking at the number and demographics of viewers we can then decide what our marketing strategy should be. In addition a successful viral video will also create a buzz about the product.


The EXECUTION:

The first thing to be done is create rapid video prototypes. It helps to have an interesting storyboard and to keep the video short, with a maximum time of 6 minutes with 3 minutes being the optimum time. The video could depict the USP of the offering or a fun way to use it. The clips can then be uploaded on the company’s channel on YouTube.

After a few days or when the number of viewers reaches over a thousand, we can use the Insights tool to figure out the demographics.

What is the Insights Tool?

It is a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. 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 is what YouTube Insights gives us:


This is the summary of the results:
(1) Tells how many views the videos are getting. This will tell you if you're getting any attention at all.
(2) Shows you which video is getting the most attention. Now you know what your prospects like - and the margin between what's getting attention and what's not.
(3) Expose your real demographics. Not too fancy, but you get to see the age range your product resonates with.
(4) Identifies the regions where you are getting traction. Again, results do vary by geographic location, so you can decide if you want to spend some money to gain exposure in a particular country or state, for that matter, or if you want to focus on your natural geography - the places in which you're getting organic attention.

The Insights tool further provides the following information:
(1)Traffic over time - days, months, a year.
(2) Video popularity by region - a handy guide to what the reaction is to the offering.
(3) Details on which videos are winners and which are not. Based on this we can decide which product merits backing, and which ones need more work.

Details of INSIGHT TOOL :

YouTube Insight definition
YouTube Insight is YouTube's external facing analytics and reporting product that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. This first version charts video views on an interactive time line and map, allowing users to drill down into different geographic regions and see the viewing activity in those regions over selected time periods. It also allows users to compare the relative popularity of their videos in a given region to all other videos in that region.


Views map
The Views map captures the distribution of views in a geographic market over a certain period of time. The aggregate data includes views from YouTube.com as well as from embeds (if applicable). Users can click on a particular country or select a specific map to see how viewing for a particular video has trended over a period of time for that country.


Relating maps and graphs
The map shows geographic data for the time period defined by the slider on the graph. The graph shows data over time for the geographic region defined by the map. By changing various settings on the graph (e.g., pulling the sider bar to a different time frame), the colors on the map will change to reflect the new time period, selected on the graph. Conversely, by selecting a country (e.g., Russia) or a new map (e.g., USA, Europe, etc.), the graph will update to reflect the viewing trends in that geographic market.


Popularity graph
This graph provides insight into how popular a particular video has been over time. This graph uses a popularity index, which measures how much more or less popular a particular video is compared to overall videos in that geographic market. For example, if my video is indexed at 96 on the graph, this means that only 4% of all videos in the selected region and timeframe have been viewed more than my video.


Popularity map
This map shows the relative popularity of a particular video within the different countries of a region. The scale is again relative, so that the country within which the video is most popular will be dark green, and the one in which it is least popular will be light green.


CRITICISM:
Few criticisms against this idea could be
• That in India internet is not available to everyone.
• YouTube is viewed only by young people and hence the demographics could be skewed.
• No information is provided by the Insight tool regarding particular regions within the country.

Although the proportion of the population having access to internet is very small, the data provided by YouTube would have a larger user sample than possible by any ordinary method of consumer survey. As mentioned, 5 Million users logged in from India in 2008, a number sure to have increased by now.

There’s a myth about YouTube that it’s only used by young people. In fact, more than two thirds of men and women in the US population over the age of 25 year have watched a YouTube video. Around 50 percent of avid users are over the age of 25 and half of those are over 35. There are a lot of adults over the age of 35 watching videos on YouTube and adults over the age of 45 are increasingly using the site to find things to buy .

Although currently no information is available about views from particular cities and regions within a country, the technology already exists to mine such data. Hence this facility could soon be available.

CONCLUSION:
By combining the power of rapid video prototyping and the immense information provided by YouTube we can achieve a unique and cheap method to take insights from the market.