The Effect of Playback Speed on YouTube Watch Time

Many new YouTubers wonder if playback speed (1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75. and 2x) on YouTube affects watch time. This is important because to monetize videos, a channel must have 4000 watch hours in a year in addition to having at least 1000 subscribers. Even after getting 1000+ subscribers, 4000 watch hours can be a difficult goal to reach for newer channels.

Four Thousand Hours in Minutes

Four thousand hours is 240,000 minutes. If you have ten videos with an average length of 5 minutes, you would need 4,800 minutes of watch time on each video in a year to get 240,000 minutes. For a new channel, that might not be realistic, putting YouTube monetization out of reach. Many videos on newer channels may only get dozens to hundreds of views. And many people leave videos before they are finished, so expect a lot of those views to run far shorter than the video length.

How to Get More Views

Creating lots of videos with longer run times is probably the best way of reaching that goal quickly. However, you shouldn't pad videos with lots of unnecessary information just to get a longer video length. If viewers think you aren't giving them the information your video title promises, they may click away and they may be less likely to subscribe. So, not only will you have a harder time reaching the 4000-hour threshold, you may struggle to reach the 1000 subscriber threshold as well.

The Playback Speed Problem

The best way to reach 4000 watch hours is to make lots of videos, but playback speed may throw a wrench into the works. Many people watch videos at a higher playback speed. Does watching videos at a higher playback speed affect the watchtime hours for YouTube content creators? I'm not aware of anything official from YouTube on this, but the consensus among YouTubers seems to be that it does. 

A YouTuber did a simple test to answer this question. He created an 18-minute video, kept it private, and watched it one time. When he checked the analytics for that video, he had a 9-minute view duration and a 50% retention rate. So, it does appear that playback speed influences both watch time and retention rates. That video is posted at the end of this article if you want to check it out.

How to Determine Potential View Durations for Your Videos

You can use this Audiobook Speed Calculator to determine how many watch minutes a video may get at different speeds. Here's how a 10-minute video's view duration may be affected by playback speed. If a viewer watches it all the way through at 1.75x speed, that will count as 6 minutes of watch time to YouTube's algorithm. If they only watch half of the video, that amounts to only three minutes of watch time. The more videos you have, the more likely you are to reach the view duration requirements even with the playback speed problem. Making longer videos will also help, but again, don't put lots of filler into a video because that might drive viewers away.