WebProNews

YouTube contacted WebProNews this afternoon to tell us about a new analytics feature it has just launched for YouTube Insight. A spokesperson tells me the feature gets more into engagement metrics than YouTube Insight has in the past.

Until now, YouTube Insight has only dealt with information related to views. With this launch it  "will give uploaders information on how viewers interact with their videos," she says.

YouTube Insight was launched about a year ago, giving video uploaders a way to see how often their videos are viewed in different regions, how popular they are compared to other videos within the same market, etc.

The new feature comes under the "Community" tab, and allows you to view numbers related to:

Ratings



Comments



Favorites



Or all of the above



It also shows the average number of actions the community takes per view of your video. "For example, if it looks like your rating is 3/5 stars but the average Japanese viewer is giving you 2, while the French tend to give you 5, you'll now know where your real fans are located," YouTube explains.

YouTube sees the addition of this feature as "a major step in the development" of the product. It sounds like it should easily be the most significant thing to happen to YouTube Insight since it launched "hot spots" in September. Hot spots allow users to pinpoint the specific parts of videos that get viewed the most. Obviously this is a good thing to know for marketing purposes.

The Community tab should be of great use to advertisers to show them how viewers are actually responding as opposed to just whether or not they viewed the video.