Buick, the BBC, and Intel have lousy YouTube brand channels. That's not the subjective opinion of some guy who has written a book on YouTube and video marketing. It's based on an objective analysis of the quantitative data from their branded YouTube channels and others in their categories.
So, what makes a lousy channel lousy?
Developing the lousy scale
Since there is no objective measure of lousy, I had to create one.
Now, there are three data points that are publicly available for developing a lousy scale for YouTube brand channels: video views, subscribers, and uploaded videos.
I quickly decided against using "video views." This seems like a more appropriate metric for comparing individual YouTube videos.
"Subscribers" is a more appropriate metric for comparing YouTube channels. Users subscribe to channels to receive updates and stay informed when something new occurs. Subscribers are consistently more engaged with a brand's content and watch a brand's videos on a regular basis.
VidStatsX provides a list of the top 2,000 most-subscribed YouTube channels. It also provides lists of the top 100 most-subscribed YouTube channels in 16 categories.
But, some YouTube brand channels were launched earlier than others, giving them a head start in adding subscribers. And is a channel lousy simply because it hasn't made it to one of these lists yet?
On May 20, 2012, the YouTube Blog said there were "tens of millions of channels on YouTube." So, even if a YouTube brand channel doesn't make it to bottom of the top 100 most-subscribed YouTube channel's list in its category, it might still be pretty good.
This is where "uploaded videos" factors into the lousy scale.
A very good YouTube brand channel should be able to generate more subscribers per uploaded video than other channels in its category. This means that a really bad -- or lousy -- channel would be one that has generated fewer subscribers per uploaded video than its competitors.
This methodology lets you calculate the equivalent of the batting average for a YouTube brand channel.
