YouTube Analytics Extended

Google, the owners YouTube, said yesterday it has added visitor demographic information to its analytics tool for advertisers on the popular video site.

Attempting to make YouTube Insight more useful and YouTube profitable, Google added a demographics tab that displays statistics on the combined total views of all the videos uploaded by a person or organization. The feature breaks down viewers by age group, gender, or a combination of the two. The information is based on what users provide Google when they set up a YouTube account.

Also the new feature gives the relative popularity of users’ videos compared to other accounts, based on geographic location.

“As with Insight’s other features, we hope this new information helps you learn how to create more compelling content that best engages the audiences you want to reach,” Google said on its corporate blog.

YouTube Insight is being used by organizations and individuals to modify video upload schedules based on when their audience is tuning in, Google said. Advertisers are using the tool to study geographic traffic patterns to judge the effectiveness of regional ad campaigns.

Google executives have said that turning YouTube into a profitable business is a major goal of the company. The company said last week that it plans to launch new products in the next few months to push the site toward that goal.

During the company’s annual shareholder meeting, co-founder Sergey Brin said YouTube and DoubleClick, the online advertising company Google bought this year for $3.1 billion, remained small businesses when compared to Google’s core search and advertising business.