Youtube has a variety of privacy features to help you customize your video viewing experience. This is a quick look at two alternates to a public video and examples of when to use them.
Unlisted Videos
If you don’t want your videos to be viewed by the general public—for instance, if they are part of your advertising campaign that is meant for a subset of your audience, or if they are pertain to something specific that wouldn’t make sense to your entire audience—consider using YouTube’s unlisted feature. By doing that, only people with the specific video link or who visit a web page that has the video embedded can view the video. It will not come up on public Youtube searches.
If you don’t want your videos to be viewed by the general public—for instance, if they are part of your advertising campaign that is meant for a subset of your audience, or if they are pertain to something specific that wouldn’t make sense to your entire audience—consider using YouTube’s unlisted feature. By doing that, only people with the specific video link or who visit a web page that has the video embedded can view the video. It will not come up on public Youtube searches.
Youtube’s definition of unlisted videos:
Unlisted videos and playlists can be seen and shared by anyone with the link. Your unlisted videos won’t appear to others who visit the “Videos” tab of your channel page. They won’t show up in YouTube’s search results unless someone adds your unlisted video to a public playlist.
You can share an unlisted video’s URL with other people. The people you share the video with don’t need a Google Account to see the video. Anyone with the link can also re-share it.
Example of Unlisted Video Use
We used that feature recently with videos from the Frontiers in Ornithology Symposium for Youth. We are in the process of making some recap and promotional videos from the inaugural event that anyone can view, but we also recorded each session and have those videos available exclusively to participants. To do so in a simple, cost-effective way, I uploaded the session videos to an unlisted Youtube playlist. I then embedded that playlist—complete with an intro video that has tips on how to use the video library and other resources that we are providing—to a password-protected page on the FOS website. Attendees who take the post-event survey online receive the password after submitting their survey. Voila!
Private Videos
I recently attended a virtual marketing conference that used a combination of Youtube’s unlisted and private video features.
Youtube’s definition of private videos:
Private videos and playlists can only be seen by you and the people you choose. Your private videos won’t appear to others who visit the “Videos” tab of your channel page. They also won’t show up in YouTube’s search results.
Comments are not available on private videos. If you want to allow comments on a video that’s not publicly available, change the privacy setting to unlisted.
The conference had pre-recorded videos from presenters available for free for 24 hours. To do that, they embedded the videos on the event’s website, making them only available to people who signed up for the conference and received the link to the site page in their inbox. After 24 hours, they switched the videos to private, making them only available to people who paid for the premium package. Another simple and free solution using Youtube’s features!