“How Many People Watch Our Online Worship?” This has been a very popular question over the past year and a half. The answer has been, “It’s difficult to know.” While it continues to be difficult to know, YouTube analytics have improved in this area and enabled us to arrive at a formula that gives us a better answer.
The formula is: 1.8 x peak concurrent views + hours of subsequent views. Because we know that people often watch the live stream in pairs or family units, we multiply the concurrent (live) views by a recognized standard of 1.8. After the live stream, views continue to mount in perpetuity. However, the actual time viewed usually remains low. It is not at all unusual to have 75 subsequent views within the first week of posting, while the actual total view time remains at approximately 5 hours. Many churches are simply adding the subsequent views. It is our position to ignore that number and instead add the hours viewed.
So, what are our actual numbers? January through August, we are averaging 55 views per week for the two services. Roughly estimated, that is 18 additional worshippers for contemporary and 37 for traditional—although those numbers vary from week to week. In comparison, our in-person attendance is 253. When we add those together, 308 represents a significant increase of 22% for our total attendance.
We celebrate the people and the outreach that these numbers represent and thank the church for supporting our live stream ministry.