I help administer the MoMA YouTube page, and while I agree that museums as a whole do not get very large numbers of views for videos, I think the experience is worthwhile because it opens the museum up for visitors in a new way and makes the museum consider ways to interact. I think the trick is that you need to approach the medium of YouTube differently from other videos. A visitor to YouTube is not looking for perfect lighting and tight-scripting of videos like television; they are looking for a quick look, a sneak peek behind-the-scenes, or a few words from an artist/curator either before or after a visit. Produce the videos quickly and timely, and embed them on your site and offer them through other channels (iTunes, Vimeo, etc) and you should get better results. Brooklyn Museum is another place to look at different approaches (visitors creating videos, videos for their new program with Twitter, etc), as well as the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the San Jose Museum of Art (to name a few).

In the end, the goal is not purely numbers; if you can provide content to 1,000 people who are very interested in, for example, watching public programs (without investing huge time/money from your staff), this might be worth more than 10,000 people who just look at a video once and don’t care about your institution.

Regards,

David