YouTube starts auditing video views

The video-sharing website YouTube said it has
started to “audit” the number of views a video has
received.
The move is aimed at preventing users from
artificially inflating view counts which, YouTube
said, mislead people about the popularity of a
video.
There are concerns that some viewers are using
tools like “redirects” or “buying” views to boost
their count.
YouTube said it will now “periodically” validate the
views on videos and remove the fraudulent ones
from the total.
“Some bad actors try to game the system by
artificially inflating view counts. They’re not just
misleading fans about the popularity of a video,
they’re undermining one of YouTube’s most
important and unique qualities,” Google, which
owns YouTube, said in a blogpost.
“While in the past we would scan views for spam
immediately after they occurred, starting today we
will periodically validate the video’s view count.”
However, the firm said that it does not expect the
new approach to affect “more than a minuscule
fraction of videos on YouTube”.
YouTube is the world’s biggest video-sharing
website.
With a large number of users watching videos on
the site, it has also become an attractive
advertising option for firms looking to attract
consumers.
Analysts said the site’s latest move to clamp down
on fraudulent views was also aimed at assuring
firms that their campaigns on the portal were
reaching a genuine audience.
“A firm would look at the number of views a video
is generating and its popularity when it decides to
place its advertisement,” Sanjana Chappalli, Asia-
Pac head of LEWIS Pulse, a firm specialising in
digital marketing, told the BBC.
“But if those views have been fraudulently
generated – then it is likely to miss the target
audience and have little or no return on
investment.”
“A view should be a metric that reflects genuine
interest, not a gauge of how many people
mistakenly or unknowingly ended up watching your
video,” the website has said.
Ms Chappalli added that the growing popularity of
other social media websites such as Facebook
meant that YouTube needed to be even more
careful with any fraudulent views.
“YouTube is just one of the many options on the
social media that companies looking to advertise
have,” she said.
“As a result, it needs to maintain trust among
advertisers for continued revenue growth.”