What is YouTube Watch Time?
Watch time is the total amount of time (calculated in hours) that viewers spend watching your videos. The higher your watch time, the higher the authority of a channel and the more likely YouTube algorithm will promote your channel through recommended videos.
Why 4000 Hours? Some history
Making money on YouTube used to be quite easy. You just needed a channel and an AdSense account, and your very first video and views could generate income. But starting 2017, YouTube implemented some requirement prior to start monetizing a YouTube channel.
But Why did YouTube implement this requirement? The reason is that first, YouTube doesn’t want users to monetize content they do not own or that goes against the policies and second, because the pressure from advertisers who would see their ads on copyrighted or unappropriate videos.
With the 4000 hours requirement, YouTube wants creators to put effort on their channel before they can turn it into an income source and at the same time YouTube has more control on where Ads are placed, since once the 4000 hours are reached channels need to go through a manual review.
As YouTube stated back in the days, “These changes will allow us to significantly improve our ability to identify creators who contribute positively to the community and help drive more ad revenue to them (and away from bad actors)”.
Do All Hours Count? No!
Making money on YouTube used to be quite easy. You just needed a channel and an AdSense account, and your very first video and views could generate income. But starting 2017, YouTube implemented some requirement prior to start monetizing a YouTube channel.
But Why did YouTube implement this requirement? The reason is that first, YouTube doesn’t want users to monetize content they do not own or that goes against the policies and second, because the pressure from advertisers who would see their ads on copyrighted or unappropriate videos.
With the 4000 hours requirement, YouTube wants creators to put effort on their channel before they can turn it into an income source and at the same time YouTube has more control on where Ads are placed, since once the 4000 hours are reached channels need to go through a manual review.
As YouTube stated back in the days, “These changes will allow us to significantly improve our ability to identify creators who contribute positively to the community and help drive more ad revenue to them (and away from bad actors)”.
How Many Views are 4000 Hours?
Well, this is a tricky question as it depends on the length of your videos and the average watch time. But if we consider that the average watch time on YouTube is 3 minutes per views, you would need at least 80.000 Views!
As we said, it depends a lot on the average watch time of your video. Consider that 4000 hours equal to 240.000 minutes, so you can do the maths according to your own channel stats.
Let’s say you have lots of short videos and your average watch time is 1 minute…
240.000 / 1 = 240.000 Views.
On the other hand if you upload lotss of livestream and long videos, and your average watch time is 6 minutes…
240.000 / 6 = 40.000 Views. You can expect that you need 40k views to reach 4000 hours!
Later on this page you can find a calculator to help you out.
If you watch a video many times, does watch time accumulate?
Repeated views count up to a certain point (say, for instance, someone watches a video multiple times a day), but they stop counting at a certain number that YouTube has not specified. It’s believed to be around 2 views per 24 hours. Repeated views are views coming from the same IP or YouTube account.
If you loop a video, does watch time count?
Just to a certain point. It used to be like this, but YouTube patched it and now putting a video on loop set and forget will stop counting hours after a while, unless you are constantly interacting with the video. Also, you need to leave your video tab open. If it plays on background, looped views won’t count.
Why do you need 4000 Hours of Watch Time?
4000 Hours of watch time is the required amount of hours to be eligible for YouTube monetization. 4000 hours of watch time are counted from the last 12 months and on public videos only. You need these many hours to show Google that your channel is getting traction and it can hence be reviewed for monetization. Also, to monetize your channel, you will also need 1000 subscribers. (even though most people say that the hardest achievement is 4000 hours)
Can you buy YouTube watch time?
Yes, you can buy YouTube watch time to reach 4000 hours faster and eventually get monetized. But make sure you buy hours from a reliable provider to avoid issues such as watch time drops.