Dear Metacafe Producers,

There have been many questions raised on the Forums about why views are flattening after 20,000 views for certain videos. My colleagues have been working hard to investigate what has been going on, and while we don’t have all the answers today, I'd like to share what we do know.

First of all, it’s the goal of the Producer Rewards program is to encourage producers to submit their best work by paying you for the submissions our community enjoys. We let our community determine the success of each video and then we fund these payments by placing advertising on www.metacafe.com and around your videos.

The “Terms & Conditions” for Producer Rewards state that only views from the website www.metacafe.com, count towards payment because our ability to sell advertising to fund these payments is limited in Metacafe Pro, our downloadable application. Nevertheless, when we first launched the program, we did count application views initially in order to increase the popularity of the Producer Rewards videos. As you know popularity leads to more popularity and from our perspective we thought this would be a win-win for producers and Metacafe.

Shortly after launch, we cut back to counting application views up to 20,000 only… thinking that this was a good compromise and would continue to give PR videos a nice kick-start. We didn’t realize that in some cases the views would not continue on the website. We thank those of you who have brought it to our attention that views on your video dramatically slowed down after 20,000 views.

We are digging in deeper to provide a full explanation because application views are only a portion of the total views. The other factor contributing to the slow down in views is that most videos do best after they are first released to the website and often there is a slow down period after that. We suspect that the timing of these two events (application views no longer being counted and the video no longer being new on the site) is resulting in certain videos not growing.

Additionally, we should mention that we do take measures to make sure that the views are from our audience and not from an automated bot (or a very patient person) watching the same video over and over and over again – and will in some cases discount these views. This practice may in some cases, explain why you can’t see views accumulate when you are “testing” the system.

We apologize for any confusion created over this issue and we should have been better about communicating the changes in how views were calculated both internally and with all of you. We have a team evaluating the issue of whether to count application views up to 20,000 views or not, and we welcome your feedback on this issue.

In the meantime, you will continue to receive credit for application views up to the 20,000 threshold until we make a formal announcement that we are going to stop that practice.

We really appreciate the feedback from our community and apologize again for the confusion surrounding this issue. You can post your general feedback here, or to discuss an individual video, please contact customersupport@metacafe.com. We appreciate your patience and persistence while you help refine and clarify how the Producer Rewards program works.

Every Time one of my videos break 20,000 views, the view speed drops 99%.

So your saying this is because 99% of my views before 20,000 hits came form the app?

I find that very hard to believe.


The reasons you have listed may play a role in this problem but they do not explain it.
There is something else going on here. I thank you, Talia for trying to help us resolve this issue, however, many of us are still awaiting the answer or better yet, the solution to this problem.

D6

Hi Sonic,

We know that these views are from the application. We are still looking into it though (we have been for the past week or so), so I will update you when I have more information.

so what you are saying is that you thought views from the application were not being counted but in fact they were?

i just re-read that so what is happening is views upto 20,000 are counted from the application ?
the other day you said no views were counted from the application at all

??

What happened is that we were counting the first 20,000 views from the application to give PR videos a jump start.

Yea and then cutting are gas line when they get 20,000

this still wont cause a complete flatline of views at 20,000. to my understanding, more people view the site then use the app. so why would the views drop to zero when the videos pass 20,000 views.

Anyone know how many people are on the app compared to the number of people on the site?

im not sure but im willing to bet that less then 30% of total viewers use the app. So shouldnt the videos maintain around 70% of the view speed that they had before 20,000 views?

Actually Talia, when a few of us pointed out a couple of weeks ago that there was a sharp drop of views after 20,000 - which was not the case (or at least not so pronouncedly) before- you repetedly asserted that nothing had been changed, and accused us of mass hysteria...
There is a distinct lack of transparency, and bad communications on metacafe's part, which is not fostering good relations with its producers... Why couldn't you just say then that the application stopped counting its views after 20,000.

My guess is that your hand has been forced to make this announcement today because of zloyshaman's website, which clearly illustrates the extent of the problem...
I have no issue with metacafe not counting the views from the application, but I do resent being told I am being "hysteric" when clearly an anomaly is pointed out to you guys. Is it so hard to just state things without shrouding them in secrecy? I really cannot see what harm it would do...

Anyway, thanks for the update... it explains a lot... Basically, as a producer, my only chance of getting some views under the current system, after my videos are off the today's page, is to rely on embedded players. At least, now that much is clear!

Yes, that was quite interesting news to hear. Every few weeks there are new surprises here. That has seemed to be obvious to me anyway because once a video leaves the Today >Highest Rated, the views drop and level out. (unless you happen to be on the Top Videos > Highest Rated pages) although I agree with Sam regarding this 'disclosure'.

Hi everyone,

Allyson Campa here. I'm the VP of Marketing and I haven't been a very active contributor to the forums but Talia does a great job of making sure we all read the posts.

So let me just say that we hear you loud and clear that we haven't been transparent enough in the past and we need to be more so going forward. It's important to us to earn you trust and we know that we are going to have to work harder to do so.

At this point, we can't completely explain why some videos completely flatline after 20,000. This is a surprise to us and I want to personally thank Attitude746 for bringing it to our attention. I haven't seen zloyshaman's website yet, but I will probably need to thank him too when I do. We are investigating this and will share what we learn. As you've been doing already, you all can help us by sharing your case studies.

What we do know is that while overall web views are much greater than client views, the behaviors are different. Client views tend to grow constantly over time, while website views often have an initial spike after being released. If the video is a hit, the views will continue to grow and grow based on viral sharing and other factors. But if the video is not a hit, views will often trail down.

So again... we are staying on this issue and will back with more information. We really appreciate your feedback and involvement!

Allyson

This has been interesting and educational. I would like to thank MC for the attention to all of these issues.
I just wanted to make one important observation. I am a MC user mainly because I was referred to this site by an associate that knew I was into original works. I had not heard of Metacafe before then. My point is; we are travelling down the same street which is "viral" "word of mouth" whatever you would like to call it. The same way we have to hope our vids grow virally, is the same as with the MC site. I personally have told alot of people and I post mostly only MC PR vids on my personal site. The relationship between MC and Producers will be the factor that continues to build a succesful site. Building viewers and a community is a goal we all share.
We are symbiotic, so I hope MC will continue to share and address important issues with us openly !
Again just my 2 cents.

Thank you Allyson for your post, which is certainly a first step towards bridging the gap that has been growing over the last few weeks between Metacafe and some of its producers.

Personally, I completely understand that Metacafe will make changes to the system, some of which might from time to time be detrimental to the producers... online videos are a fast evolving field, and the pr system will probably require constant tweaking for a while yet. However, in the interest of reasonable transparency, it is also important for you guys to stop moving the goal posts without informing us of it first (and without being forced to do so because someone has just come up with a way, on an external website, to graphically track what all our videos are doing).

The same applies to other issues where Metacafe is using some very blurry standards (small screens, text in videos, screen shots, content of the videos). State things clearly and let the producers know where they stand, before they spend time and money making videos that will eventually get rejected. And display those standards clearly and prominently on the website.

The pleasure was all mine j/k
if it wasnt for zloyshaman's website i wouldnt have been able to show just how dramatic the change was.

laters

Zloyshaman,

Any idea why there are huge spikes up or down on the graphs on your site?
Sucker Bet Graph from your website

Notice around 1200 it drops from a 3.85 down to a 3.2 and then back up to a 3.35 then 3.89 in a short amount of time?

Keith
hersheymagic2

What my application does is loads page with your video, like anyone who uses the web browser, and looks for rank and number of views like anyone who visits this page. So if it was written 3.2 at some moment - application remembered that it was 3.2.
Another question is why Metacafe web site showed 3.2 rank for that moment. Maybe it was a coincidence and several people rank your video low at the same moment. Maybe it was some "feature" of Metacafe web site which described in my FAQ Section: "Sometimes you can see different rank or number of views at the same moment but from different points of internet or even from different browser." And ranks was actually higher but was showed as 3.2
Again: I just read what is written on MC web site and if it was written something strange - my web site will show something strange.
(By the way, it seems you already asked me this question by e-mail and I answered you with asking to show me URL to video but you didn't answer)

I did send an e-mail but never received one back. It may have automatically gone to my spam filter but shouldn't have! Thanks for the info. I appreciate your help and the great site!

Keith
hersheymagic2

Yes..its a great site..but MC is always first on my list!

Sam: Thanks for your acknowledgement. I completely agree that we need to be more clear across the board and do a better job communicating both internally and externally. Allyson

Captainstatic:

Thanks for your thoughts, which are certainly worth more than 2 cents. We know that a loyal and happy community is one of the best ways to grow. And we love to see you all earn money on our site because so that you'll want to post more videos and spread the word. And since there are more of you (producers) than of us (employees) we'd be foolish not to share as much as we reasonably can with you because the real feedback you provide is the best R&D we could do. And clearly we have room to improve on this going forward.

Allyson

still I don't really understand this.

why wouldn't you have told us that the views from the application actually do count? so many complained about this, complained that only website views count. everyone would just have loved it, if you would have said: yes application views do count. but only until it reaches 20000. everyone would have been happy.

did you just found out? or do application views only count on some videos? maybe the ones which have been submitted with the application? that would maybe explain why some videos had a kick start while others don't.

usually good news is communicated gladly
and that application views count is definitely good news. but you haven't told us. why??

best
SoundAndVision

Views from the application count across the board up to 20,000 views - it doesn't matter if you submitted through the application or the site.

Has Metacafe thought about doing a bulk email to the existing Producers whenever there are changes in the program or even just updates? You don't even have to give all the details in the email, you could just direct everyone to the PR Updates new thread where we could go and read about it. Most Producers are NOT active in the forums. That would not only get the message across but also invite more people to use the forums. Since there are only approximatley 390 producers, that email would not be that hard to generate automatically. That would make it harder for us to say "you never told me!".

We haven't made any changes since the very beginning of January, but this is definitely something we have been discussing.

Hi guys,

We still don't have all the answers yet, but we are still looking into this issue and investigating it from many angles. I don't have any updates for now, but I wanted y'all to know we are still on top of this.