Average View Duration (AVD) is one of the most important metrics on YouTube. It tells you how long people are watching your content for.

It also signals to YouTube how valuable your content is to its users. The longer your AVD, the more YouTube sees your video as valuable, the more it will continue to push it to its users.

Most creators understand what it takes to increase their retention. It’s a strong hook in the very beginning of the video, creating open loops, building suspense etc etc etc.

These are all true and I’m not here to say don’t do those things, you need to learn those. But there are a few very easy changes you can make that will work in tandem with your retention strategy to improve your podcast’s AVD.

The ‘trick’ is to basically just identify the subset of your viewers with the highest AVD, and get more of those viewers. Easy right?

The first step is identifying which subset of your viewers watches for the longest.

It’s really easy to do this.

Go to your YouTube analytics page and go to the ‘Advanced mode’. When you’re in advanced view you will want to change the ‘breakdown’ to ‘traffic source’ — this will show you how your viewers found your content. You can then sort by AVD.

This will tell you where the viewers that watch for the longest amount of time come from — how they actually found your content.

For most creators the top three will be

(not always in that order)

Which makes sense, right? People that have stumbled across your content on their homepage are much more likely to watch for a short amount of time and move on, they were just window shopping. The users that have intentionally sought out your content are more likely to stick with it and watch for a longer time.

So now that we know where our best viewers come from, the goal is to simply create more of those viewers.

Okay so the first of the three highlighted in that image above is End Screens.

You might find it surprising that end screens are a significant enough of a traffic source to focus on. It’s not often you hear people talk about it, but that’s why it works.

At the end of every YouTube video you have 20 seconds where another video or playlist is suggested to the viewer. Most creators don’t put much thought into this, and will either pick their latest video or default to YouTube’s ‘best for viewer’ option.

This leads to a very low CTR. 99% of users will not click.

This is because there’s an entire list of other recommended videos to the side of yours and you haven’t given them a reason to choose another of yours.

Here’s what you should do:

Here’s an example from an episode I worked on a while ago and below is a screenshot of the end screen for that video.

The episode is an interview with a local newsletter creator, Marissa.

Anyone that has watched or listened right up to the very end of the episode clearly has an interest in local newsletters. They may have a local newsletter themself or they’ve contemplating starting one. So what’s the most likely thing they’re going to want to listen to or watch next? Another local newsletter interview would be my guess.

My script for that outro was as follows:

“If you enjoyed that then the next episode you should listen to is this episode with Michael Kauffman. He’s the founder of The Newsletter Club, which was referenced a few times in this episode with Marissa, and of all the local newsletter episodes we’ve put out, it’s the most popular. So that’s a good place to start. Go watch that one next!”

9.9% of viewers that make it to the end of that episode click onto the suggested episode. Which is exceptionally higher than the average.

The biggest compounding effect from this the watch time.

These are the viewers that are most likely to watch for longer — they just made it to the end of a one hour episode — so let’s foster that behaviour and give these people more of what they enjoy.

In short… we’re taking the viewers that watch the longest and sending them to a video that they’re most likely to watch a lot of.

Another feature that doesn’t get used enough.

YouTube doesn’t actively promote or push users towards playlists and most users aren’t seeking out a playlist of videos to watch. So it’s understandable that creators aren’t spending time creating or curating their playlists.

But as you saw from my analytics screenshot at the top of this post. Users that find your videos in playlists are valuable viewers with high view duration.

The kind of viewers we want to make sure stick around. So let’s make that easier for them.

A good example of a podcast that does this well on their YouTube channel is The Rest Is Science (one of my go-to listens right now)

If you create content that has different styles or niches within it, separate them into categories and create playlists for those subjects.

Following on from the previous example I gave —the local newsletter niche. There’s a good chance that if someone enjoyed you talk on a particular subject, they’re going to want to hear more of that specifically.

If you have a guest-based podcast, you could have playlists based on what type of guest they are:

There’s so many different ways that you can categorise your content, just think about what makes each episode different and how your episodes can relate to each other.

The most important part is letting your audience know that the playlists exist.

A short CTA (call to action) near the beginning of the episode every now and then, a reminder at the end of the episode, or a community post are just a few options.

You could even double this up with the end screens and promote your playlists at the end of the video, replacing your end screen video with an end screen playlist (this does have a generally lower CTR than an end screen video).

I personally like the idea of a Top 10 playlist. A selection of your 10 most popular videos, the perfect starting point for a new subscriber.

REMEMBER — These practices are not to maximise views, but to aid in pushing up your AVD by keeping the valuable long form viewers on your channel, watching more of your content. Not many people will use the playlists, but the people that do will be watching for a long time.

The third and final traffic source I want to highlight is Suggested Videos.

Most people think they can’t control this one. And that’s true to an extent.

The YouTube algorithm decides which videos are suggested in the sidebar next to your content. A lot of those video will be from other channels similar to yours and videos from the users other regularly watched channels.

But some of them will your videos.

This is where the importance of consistent branding comes in.

Having a distinct, consistent packaging format is how viewers recognise your content on the homepage… and it’s the exact same for ‘suggested’.

These are all factors that will subconsciously resonate with the viewer and lead them to be more likely to click on another of your videos.

If a viewer has just one of your videos and in the mindset to watch another, seeing your face or branding to the side of the current video they’re watching reduces that friction in the decision making.

Here’s an example, Colin and Samir’s YouTube channel

It’s not a case of repeating the exact thumbnail format every time. It’s about keeping consistent and recognisable features throughout each thumbnail.

Colin and Samir most often do not even have their faces in the thumbnail, but you still know it’s their video when you see it on the homepage or the sidebar. That’s because they’ve been using the same font and shade of yellow for six years.

So when you’re watching one of their videos and you have a selection of options in the sidebar, what are you most likely to click? Probably the one that is most similar to the one you just clicked on.