# watchtime
## English
### Etymology

From watch +‎ time.

### Noun

watchtime (uncountable)
* The amount of time that viewers spend watching something.
** 2016 January 28, Jillian D'Onfro, “Facebook finally gave us a real idea how close it's getting to YouTube”, in Business Insider‎, archived from the original on 2016-01-28:YouTube has also said that its watchtime has been growing 60% year-over-year. With some rough math, let's say then that YouTube now has around 650 million hours of watchtime a day. Facebook video could be seeing about one-sixth of the watchtime as YouTube. Because YouTube hasn't actually released an updated stat in a while, we still don't have a perfect idea of how YouTube and Facebook's platforms compare in terms of watchtime.
** 2017 May 26, Meaghan Beatley, “20-Minute Episodes of 'Game of Thrones' Are Just About Ads”, in Vice‎, archived from the original on 2022-01-21:Jason Urgo, CEO of YouTube analytics firm Social Blade, told Motherboard that according to data pulled from over 12,000 channels over the month of May, "there is evidence that, on average, a video when viewed on mobile will have less watchtime than any other platform." He found that videos watched on phones and tablets averaged 3.5 minutes of watchtime while computers averaged 5.2 minutes. Televisions, unsurprisingly, won out with 10.3 minutes. "When taking a macro look into watchtime habits, yes there is evidence that shorter is better on mobile," he said.
** 2018, Kenneth E. Long, Trump’s Economic Era and the Neoconservatives, Progressives and Globalists, [Radford, Va.]: Austrian Economics Press, →ISBN, page 21:To qualify for the YouTube Partner Program, a channel must meet the threshold of 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers.
** 2019 August 25, Max Fisher, Amanda Taub, “In Brazil, YouTube Fuels Rise of Far Right”, in The New York Times International Weekly (in collaboration with Toronto Star), Toronto, Ont., page 6, column 1:YouTube’s recommendation system is engineered to maximize watchtime, among other factors, the company says, but not to favor any political ideology.
** 2020, Bernhard Rieder, Engines of Order: A Mechanology of Algorithmic Techniques, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, →ISBN, page 254:Similarly, YouTube argues that they are not simply optimizing for watchtime but for user ‘satisfaction’ (Lewis, 2018).
** 2020 March 8, Jack Nicas, “Can YouTube quiet its conspiracy theorists?”, in The News Tribune, volume 137, number 334, Tacoma, Wash., page 2C, column 4:“Over the past year alone, we’ve launched over 30 different changes to reduce recommendations of borderline content and harmful misinformation, including climate change misinformation and other types of conspiracy videos,” he [Farshad Shadloo] said. “Thanks to this change, watchtime this type of content gets from recommendations has dropped by over 70 percent in the U.S.”
** 2022 September 23, Sabrina Maddeaux, “C-11 presents more holes than solutions”, in National Post, volume 24, number 275, Toronto, Ont., page A10, column 3:While they can certainly force feed more Canadian content to users, the move would likely backfire. This is because the path to virality on YouTube, TikTok and others depends on watchtime and engagement.
** 2023 October, “Angry Birds, a timeless favourite for fans”, in Licensing Magazine‎, Turin: BM Srl, page 51:Watchtime continues to increase due to fun, engaging and versatile content offering - comparing H1 2023 to H1 2022, its growth was of 42%.