I’ve been thinking recently about a gap, or what I am choosing to view as a gap, in online video metrics. People are shouting about the total number of views their videos have, with great relish, but what use is that number, really? When someone gets on the front page of digg, or a Youtube feature, or something similar, they will get a lot of views. But when that spotlight turns away from them, how much of that extra traffic do they keep? In my experience, you keep almost none of it. So, sure, you can convince enough of the Digg users, or the Youtube or iTunes editors to talk about your show, but are you convincing enough of the people watching the videos to come back?

What does it matter, in other words, if your Youtube-featured video gets 100,000 views? Are those views gained because people are liking your content, or because it’s what’s in front of them, and they’re essentially channel surfing?

The goal of this potential metric would be to measure the popularity or stickiness of the person or group making the videos. Because I want to be able to compare my limited popularity to your massive popularity.

Now, I realize I’m saying nothing particularly new or insightful. To make up for that, though, I’d like to present a new metric. This is rough, and I’d like to get feedback on it, to make it better, or to let me know that it’s a silly idea.

The metric is this:

Video Views (Total) / Number of Videos / Number of Subscribers = Views Per Subscriber

Allow me to explain the logic. Dividing the total video views by the number of videos will get you an average number of views per video that you put out. This strikes me as a useful abstraction to compensate for the growth or decline in your traffic/audience over time. You need, I think, to “stabilize” the number.

Please note, I’m not a statistician, but rather a puppeteer, who spends a good chunk of his day with his hand up a fictional character’s butt. I may be continuing this trend right now.

Once you have your average, you divide it by the number of subscribers. The reason I do this is because I have noticed that I’m getting a number of views on each video I put out that is consistently higher than any of the standard metrics (such as feedburner). By those counts, I ought to only be getting a fraction of the views that I am. The reason for those extra views? People happening upon my content, by whatever method, and giving it a try. Some will stick around and become a subscriber, while most won’t. In theory, my numbers should not only be going up but be going up faster, as more people subscribe, and more opportunities are existed for people to happen upon the content (assuming that fans mention the content). My question is: should this drift between subscribers and views be large, or small? Which is the good metric? I believe that a lower Views Per Subscriber (VPS) is better, in that it suggests to me that more of the people who are being shown your content are sticking around. This may be the most obvious thing in the world to say, but if I have X subscribers and Y views, it’s better for the life of my content if an increase to Y*2 views is met with a X*2 increase in subscribers. Otherwise, the new people being shown your content are sticking around. Or they are sticking around for a while, and simply replacing other fans who have jumped ship (which would potentially explain any flatlining in subscribers).

To put in a real-world example, I’ll use my current Youtube numbers. They aren’t amazing, by any stretch, but here they are:

800,000 views

90 videos

704 subscribers

This brings me to a VPS of 12.62 (800,000/90/704).

I think that the better number is one closer to 1 (every view is brought in by a subscriber; with each new potential viewer being shown your content becoming a subscriber), but I’d love to hear what you think. My reasoning for favoring a golf-style scoring system can be explained thusly:

Suppose that over the course of adding 5 new videos, my views per video average increases from 8888 to an even 20,000. Without an increase in subscribers, that would mean that my VPS would be:

900,000 / 95 / 704 = 13.45

My VPS is higher, and the stickiness of my content is shown to be less. Suppose, on the other hand, that as part of that growth I brought in, say, 300 subscribers:

900,000 / 95 / 1004 = 9.435

There are obvious downsides to this approach, of course. I could put up a single video, get 1 view and 1 subscriber, and have a VPS of 1. Is that a bad thing, though? If you have ten subscribers, and you only have ten views of each of your videos, are you performing poorly, or have you saturated an extremely small market?

Maybe a better piece of math is to simply divide the number of subscribers by the number of videos you’ve released? In that case, the higher number would be better (and my own would be 7.4).

What do you think about the need for a new metric? Which approach do you think makes more sense?

What would your VPS be?