Startup Story #8: Eugene on How ChannelMeter is Smarter than YouTube Analytics
They used to say, ‘behind every successful man is a woman’. Now they say, ‘in front of every successful man and woman is a camera and YouTube’.
YouTube has written (or rather shot!) many success stories. In 2009, 13 year old Bethany Mota started posting videos on fashion and beauty tips from the comfort of her room. Today, she has around 7 million Subscribers and 544 million video views, and has successfully launched her own clothing and accessories line at Aéropostale (Source: Wikipedia). One of the early birds of YouTube, Michelle Phan, started with make-up tutorial in 2006. After 300 videos, 6 million subscribers and 1 billion views, she teamed up with L’Oreal to launch her own cosmetics line- EM by Michelle Phan. And there are many more…. (Source: Think with Google)
Even though every YouTube Creator’s story and content style is different, they all have one thing in common- their goals. They all strive towards gaining millions of subscribers, getting billions of views, increasing watch time, and reaching and engaging wider audience. ChannelMeter helps these creators in analyzing and measuring the performance data of their YouTube channel or video to discover what is attracting their viewers, to keep a track of in-vogue topics, and many more.
Eugene Lee, CEO and Co-founder of ChannelMeter, talks more about how ChannelMeter’s video and channel data analytics is more advanced than YouTube Analytics.
About ChannelMeter
Q: Tell us something about ChannelMeter and how it works.
A: ChannelMeter is a knowledge graph of YouTube & Online Video derived from the huge amounts of data we collect. Our tool works by taking this huge sea of data, mining it, packaging and delivering it into a straightforward and visual story. We provide deep and powerful insights on YouTube, allowing creators to be most successful with maximum impact. Equipping publishers with knowledge that can change the way they effectively create content suiting their audience’s consumption needs is what we strive for.
Q: How did you come up with the idea of ChannelMeter?
A: The conception of ChannelMeter happened while I was working at a company that was very early in online video. While the company evangelized pushing content everywhere, I noticed publishers and creators would get more views on YouTube by 95 to 99 percent out of the 26 sites we distributed to. It was clear who held down on audiences.
One person who really encouraged me to give ChannelMeter a breath of life was YouTuber Corey Vidal. He and other amazing creators inspired me to collect data on subscribers. As the data got deeper, creators wanted to track uploads, comments, favorites, ratings, and channel wide metrics. I knew I would be able share some really cool insights publishers could use to determine what works for their channel at the point in time of the current data. That’s where ChannelMeter started.
Q: What technologies and tools are you using to calculate the performance data, which is used to analyze YouTube channels and videos?
A: It’s a combination of a handful of powerful technologies. Google’s GO, Cassandra, AngularJS and combination of tools we built ourselves.
Q: What marketing efforts are you putting in to make ChannelMeter a well-known brand?
A: Sharing data with press, tweeting out stats, speaking at conferences and publicly highlighting channels hitting outstanding milestones. Furthermore, blowing our customers who evangelize our service has been great.
ChannelMeter and the business opportunity
Q: According to you, why is it important for YouTube creators to frequently measure their channel and video performance?
A: It’s important because a creator should be acutely aware of what exactly works. If you don’t know what content your audience is attracted to, you’ll never know what actually worked for you. You have to know who your target audience is and what engages them, then you can grow from there. Do you want to just shoot darts in the dark or do you want to know what your target is?
Q: How is ChannelMeter helping Youtube creators in growing their views and popularity, and hence their brand?
A: We can always do a better job of helping out the YouTubers. There is going to always be a continuing improving process. But how we have helped publishers so far is by helping those who are willing to see the data, assess it, and see some visual viewpoints that could be effective for them. It should be priority to look at the data.
Q: How often do you refresh the data of each channel?
A: Some data points refresh once an hour while the vast majority is collected once a day.
Q: Why ChannelMeter, when we already have YouTube Analytics?
A: YouTube Analytics is great, it’s something that’s good enough for the general creator. However when you’re a creator who needs intelligence on the competitive landscape, trends in the ecosystem, and understanding of how your most engaged audiences consume content, YouTube analytics won’t be enough.
Future Plans
Q: Where do you see ChannelMeter in the next 10 years?
A: We want to be a platform that allows any publisher or brand to leverage the data we have to help them make the best content. Not only do we want to help publishers or brands perform the best marketing for their content, but we want them to be able to reach the widest audiences they can. Moreover, we are striving to change and influence the way advertisers buy and sell video ads. If we can change the way videos are priced, we think we are on a pretty good path.
Q: Will you incorporate websites like Dailymotion, Vimeo, Vine, etc. in your business structure?
A: We have no objections. YouTube is only our main data point for now because that’s where it consists the majority of the audience and Youtube makes it a priority to make that data available. Until you see huge audiences, I think the existing platforms have a lot of catching up to do for the benefit of the publisher. We don’t care where the videos are, we just want to pull the data. A platform who is more enthusiastic about sharing that data will have better quality publishers.
Q: Any word of advice for all the startups out there, who are trying to make it big like ChannelMeter.
A: Always be resourceful. Be intimately connected with customers and users. Know who your users are, how they work, how they strategize, and what makes them tick. Cater to your users needs. There is no purpose in building something if it doesn’t solve a major problem. Build the best team you can. Bring on people who understand the mission. These are things you can’t ignore.
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