You Tube moves from "views" to "engagement"

I was interested to read that YouTube is changing the focus of how it wants its users to engage with the site. The article, referenced by MarketingMag.ca, explains that YouTube has changed it's 'related videos recommendation' from number of clicks/views to time spent viewing videos or channels. The idea is that users will spend more time viewing videos and be more engaged with the site, rather than clicking quickly through quirky videos of cats playing the piano or a baby biting his brother's finger!

I posted this article to Digg, as I was interested to see how the community would view this change in the YouTube user experience. This change took effect on March 15, 2012, and so far the number of views is down slightly, but the length of time spent viewing videos is up slightly.

From MarketingMag.ca

There was an interesting Forbes article released yesterday, where contributor Adam Theirer talked about the relationships between advertisers and consumers. He acknowledges that consumers hate advertising and do everything to try and avoid it; using PVR's to record shows and fast forwarding through commercials, and downloading AdBlock software for internet browsers. However, he points out that without advertising revenue, we'd all be paying for online content, we'd pay more for TV subscriptions, and so on. For companies who choose to advertise on YouTube, having users more engaged with the videos they're watching means they are likely to also be more engaged with the advertisements. It will be interesting to monitor whether this is actually the case, and if metrics, such as click throughs, increase due to this change in user experience.

What do you think? Do you think advertising click-throughs rates will increase with this new model?