The peaks above the progress bar are useful, but not for the reason most people think. How we read them across ten uploads.
What we do
One graph tells you almost nothing. A peak can be a great moment, a confusing one people rewound to understand, or a chapter people jumped to. So we line up the graphs for the last ten uploads and only trust a pattern that shows up in at least three of them.
Then we watch each peak with the sound on and ask one question: did people come back to enjoy this, or to catch something they missed? The first kind we make more of. The second kind we fix with a caption, a slower cut or a clearer shot.
What it changes
Most channels we start with have two or three moments their viewers keep coming back to, and nobody has noticed. Building the next video around them is the cheapest growth there is.
Turn on notifications
One email when a note goes up, about once a fortnight. Nothing else, and one tap to stop.