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YouTube Becoming A Giant Focus Group

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The Los Angeles Times

Published: June 5, 2008

Three days after Weezer posted its music video "Pork & Beans" on YouTube, 2.2 million people had watched it. And 65 percent of them were men.

The heavily male demographic surprised the band's marketing team, which three months ago wouldn't have been able to find out about the gender, or much else, of the people clicking on one of Weezer's videos. A feature called YouTube Insight, introduced in March, gives YouTube account holders who have uploaded videos to the site a range of statistics, charts and maps about their audiences.

The data bring a little science to what has been the art of viral marketing and the potential for big changes in how bands, television shows, movies and consumer products are promoted on the Internet.

Until recently, "it's been hard to measure the success of online advertising campaigns," said Adam Spielberger, executive vice president of interactive marketing at Special Ops Media, a New York interactive advertising agency. Now "people are trying to dig down into the numbers."

Facebook Has Similar Reports

Insight is part of a trend on the Web. The social networking giant Facebook offers account holders a weekly report that, like Insight, is free - and has a similar name, Insights. The information it provides is used by individuals and companies that have Facebook pages and want to hone their marketing.

Before Insight, success on Google Inc.'s YouTube was measured primarily in one way: by the number of times a video was watched. The data available through Insight include age, gender and location as well as the identities of the Internet sites viewers came from and where they went after watching a clip. Marketers and advertisers use the data to decide how to target their next round of ads or where bands should tour, said Tracy Chan, product manager of YouTube Insight.

"YouTube is becoming the world's biggest focus group," Chan said.

'The Discovery Element'

The YouTube data are more specific than what bands can get from TV and radio, said Ben Patterson, who worked on Weezer's marketing strategy.

"What's distinct about YouTube Insight is the immediacy of the information and the discovery element - how viewers found the content," he said.

Ideally, the data provided by YouTube Insight will "help identify better who true tastemakers are," said Patterson, who is president of DashGo, a Santa Monica, Calif., company that provides digital distribution and marketing to artists. "What really sparks a viral campaign? What is the match to the flame?"

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