Welcome back to the digital water cooler that is the 360VR Community! As 360VR Creators, we are really excited to see what the big guns, aka the Googles of this World, are giving us as tools to make our creations better. The latest addition to the YouTube Analytics tools for Creator Studio is the 360° Heatmaps.
As YouTube Creators, we have always appreciated the Analytics tools provided by Google, so our expectations for the Heatmaps are quite high. Taking a quick look at the screenshot below gives you a preview of what the tool looks like. It is mostly a visual tool, with the usual numbers/stats to support.
The following is an excerpt from the YouTube Creators Blog, which we thought we’d share with you here:
We want to help you create your next immersive video. So using this tool, we’ve done some early research on what makes an engaging 360-degree video. Here are a few findings:
Focus on what’s in front of you: The defining feature of a 360-degree video is that it allows you to freely look around in any direction, but surprisingly, people spent 75% of their time within the front 90 degrees of a video. So don’t forget to spend significant time on what’s in front of the viewer.
Get their attention: While a lot of time is spent focusing on what’s in front, for many of the most popular VR videos, people viewed more of the full 360-degree space with almost 20% of views actually being behind them. The more engaging the full scene is, the more likely viewers will want to explore the full 360-degree view. Try using markers and animations to draw attention to different parts of the scene.
Keep different experiences in mind: The context in which people are viewing VR videos matters too. Some might be watching on a mobile and portable Cardboard, while others are watching on a desktop computer. For instance, we found viewers usually need a couple seconds to get situated in Cardboard, which isn’t needed for other devices. So make sure to give your viewers a few seconds before jumping into the action.
For the full YouTube Creators Blog post, click HERE.
