YouTube Analytics: A Powerful Way To Grow Your Channel

Sep 3, 2021 16 min read

YouTube is the top destination for streaming video content & is the second most visited site in the world.

With 2.5 billion monthly active users that consume more than 5 billion videos each day on the platform, you can’t just ignore YouTube’s competence to be a part of your marketing approach.

Tracking YouTube analytics is a significant part of the YouTube marketing strategy to refine your video content blueprint. Also, YouTube analytics helps you analyze what is working and what is not working for your brand.

Diving deeper into the YouTube metrics, you can uncover all the vital aspects of video marketing such as video views, audience demographics, traffic sources, keywords, ad revenue & many more.

We have encased a list of YouTube analytics encompassing 20 metrics you should measure and explaining how to measure YouTube analytics & top tools to track analytics in 2021. Read on the article to fabricate a successful YouTube marketing strategy & grow your brand.

Top YouTube Analytics You Should Measure

YouTube View Analytics

YouTube video view analytics are the indicators of how successful your YouTube channel is. It refers to how users are consuming your videos. These channel metrics are located on the overview tab; utilize these YouTube channel analytics to get the channel performance report, identify current trends & understand what’s working best for your brand.

Subscribers

Subscribers on YouTube are the users or channels who have subscribed to your YouTube account over a specific period of time. Whenever you upload any videos on your channel, your subscribers can observe them on their feed. YouTube’s 'Subscribers Report' provides you data about gaining & losing subscribers based on videos, locations, and gain periods.

Tip: To compare subscribers’ growth & to get insight on if there’s any significant change of subscribers, hover the cursor over the line or the bar diagram. If you are not getting your desired subscribers, assess your video content & posting time.

Subscribers

Views

Views metrics denote the gross number of time your brands’ videos have been played, including repeat views. Most viewed videos indicate that your content is enticing & viewers are interested in that type of content. Views help to figure out your top-performing videos. The real-time view is the metric that shows the number of views received by your video in the last 48 hours. It is presented in a chart with an estimation of hourly views updated in real-time.

Tip: Take your most viewed content & use it to expand it into more in-depth content or closely related topics. By adjusting your timeframe to ‘Lifetime', you can identify your all-time best-performing videos. Track real-time views to get an impression of the performance of your newly launched video.

Views

Channel Watch Time

Channel watch time metrics give you data about the total amount of video watch time in hours over a specific period.

Tip: Make sure that your video thumbnail & title are relevant to your video content as it helps to enhance watch time. Misleading thumbnails or titles disappoint viewers and results in lowering your channel watch time. Choose a 28 days time frame to get the comparative data about average watch time.

Note: There is another metric, ‘Watch time,’ that is, the cumulative amount of time people have watched a video. It indicates that the type of content people resonate with & are willing to watch. Videos with a considerable amount of watch time frequently appear in the search result or related videos search. Watch time is a crucial factor in ranking at the top on YouTube.

Channel Views

Channel views refer to the typical performance of your channel by showing the number of views your entire channel accumulates over a particular time period. Channel view helps you figure out high-performing videos, anticipate seasonal changes & trends, and determine the best time to upload new videos.

Tip: Use a 28-day timeframe to get the metrics that show a comparison between channel views & compares to the average amount of views that the channel receives.

Average View Duration

To get the average view duration metric, divide the total watch time by total views for your video or channel. In short, it’s the average amount of time people spend watching your video. You also can avail of average views in percentage. Average view duration helps you to analyze how engaging your content is. Low average view duration denotes that viewers are not able to connect to your content & your video content requires improvisation to meet viewers’ expectations.

Tip: To get a good average view duration, make your videos front-loaded, refrain from using long boring intros. Instead, share a crisp introduction to hook your viewers in the first three seconds, within ten-second show them the value your video can offer.

Average View Duration

Audience Retention

Audience retention is a chart showing the frequency of watching your video in each moment; it offers data as a percentage of total views. Audience retention is a vital metric to track as it shows the precise moments that viewers begin to drop off from your video.

Tip: Use audience retention metrics to figure out in which section of the content is responsible for losing views & trim that section and exclude that type of content in your next video.

YouTube Reach Analytics

Use YouTube reach metrics to monitor how viewers are discovering your videos. Let’s check out top YouTube reach metrics you should track:

Impressions

Impressions refer to the number of times your videos are spotted by potential viewers while on YouTube. Impression shows if your videos are shown on YouTube searches or not. Tracking impressions helps you to get a clear idea of the relevancy of your video content. YouTube impression does not comprise external traffic sources.

Impressions

Tip: To show up on YouTube searches & related videos more frequently, ensure to use relevant keywords on your video title & description. Besides, to appear often in related videos, search for a video that is performing decent & which video content has relevancy to your video & use homogeneous video tags.

Traffic Sources

Traffic sources are the YouTube analytics that refers to the space where your viewers find your videos. Traffic sources include channel pages, browser features, suggested videos, search, playlists, or other YouTube features, or external sources such as external websites or direct traffic.

Traffic Sources

Tip: To track which website brings more traffic to your video, click on the 'External Traffic' source. It is a beneficial way to mark potential influencers or traffic-driving websites. It can help you spot potential collaboration opportunities. As the initial steps measure, 'Suggested Videos’ to get an insight into which other channels are driving traffic. Using the 'Advance Mode' you can get the more dropdown menu & check 'Playback Locations'. It will guide you through measuring the traffic that is driving embedded views.

Bonus tip: Click on ‘YouTube search’ to get the traffic source and the search terms that are helping to direct people to your video. Depending on your aim, you can add or remove tag to increase views or prohibit wrong searches.

Impressions Click-Through Rate

Impressions click-through rate is the percentage of viewers who watch your video after getting a glimpse of your thumbnail & clicking on it. A high click-through rate indicates that your video thumbnail & keywords are impactful. Impression CTR comprises views that you have received only from the thumbnails displayed on YouTube, views, and clicks from external sources. Impression CTR is the indicator of the effectiveness of your video thumbnail & title.

Impressions Click-Through Rate

Tip: Ensure to create a thumbnail with an attractive color combination & enticing title to boost the click-through rate.

Impressions Click-Through Rate

Top YouTube Search Terms

Top YouTube search term is available under traffic sources which denote the search terms that direct people to your videos from YouTube search. YouTube search terms help you analyze if your YouTube keyword strategy is adequate or if it requires a twitch in some sections.

YouTube Audience Analytics

YouTube audience metrics give you insights about your viewers & helps you to understand their choices & requirements. You can scale your video reach and impression by inculcating this understanding on your content & communication management strategy.

Unique Viewers

Unique viewers metrics refer to the estimated gross number of people who have watched your videos over a specific time. Unique viewers are the people or accounts who have watched you at least once. These metrics give you a glimpse of how frequently people are watching your content on YouTube. Notably, people who have previously watched your channel from a private browser & deleted their watch history or those who have not watched your channel for over a year are also included in unique viewers.

Unique Viewers

Tip: Motivate your subscribers to turn on notifications of their channels so that they won't miss your content. It helps you to draw more unique users.

Channel views calculate all your views, but unique views tally actual viewers. Hence, if a single person watches the same video multiple times, the YouTube algorithm will count it as only one. In contrast, the channel view will count the number of times visitors have watched the video or opened the channel.

Returning Viewers

Returning viewers metrics refer to viewers who have watched your videos previously & again returned to your channel to watch more videos in a selected period of time.

Tip: Closely monitor the metrics, as high returning viewer numbers denote that viewers can resonate with your video content. You can request your viewers to subscribe to your channel.

Bonus: A bar chart is available on YouTube analytics 'When your viewers are on YouTube.' It showcases the time & day when your viewers are highly active. Track these metrics to upload & post your videos at the best time when your viewers are most active. You can activate 'Community Tab' and assign one of your team members as an admin to ensure to create posts & respond to comments during viewers most active time.

Watch Time From Subscribers

Watch time from subscribers tracks the total number of watch time of your channel that comes from your channel's subscribers.

Tip: Create a consistent posting schedule to get bulk watch time from subscribers. Maintaining a content calendar helps subscribers understand what they should expect & when you post at a regular time, it becomes a habit for them to watch your videos when they are live.

Audience Demographics

Audience demographics provide data about your viewers' age, gender, location, and language statistics.

Tip: If your video is not performing well in certain countries, use subtitles & tailor your content more precisely relating to the culture & language of that particular country.

Audience Demographics

YouTube Engagement Analytics

YouTube engagement analytics provide you data regarding how viewers are interacting with your videos. Let’s check out the engagement metrics:

YouTube Engagement Analytics

Top Playlists

It is the YouTube analytics that shows the playlist with high overall watch time. Top playlist is a vital engagement metric as an excellent & enticing playlist can hold your audience’s attention, keeping them watch more of your video content for a longer duration.

Tip: Reshuffle the order of your lower-performing play to boost the performance. While reshuffling keep the videos with the highest average view time at the top.

Average Time In The Playlist

Average time in playlist YouTube metric measures the average time viewer spends watching that playlist before way out. Viewers spending more time on your playlist boost your overall watch time & views for the channel.

Tip: To deal with a playlist with lower watch time, relocate the best video to the front of the list; it helps retain more viewers.

Shares & Comments

Share & comments denote the number of time your video has been shared via the share button & the number of comments you have received on the video. Share & comment shows if your content is discussion-worthy. Usually, viewers can relate to a video attached to an emotional angle, which boosts share & comments number.

Tip: Ask questions in your videos to get more comments. To increase the share, you can direct them to whom they should share the video.

Suggested Read: How To Turn Off Comments On YouTube

Card & End Screen Reports

If you’ve added interactive content to your videos, these reports show you how viewers interact with these elements. Card and end screen metrics display the efficacy of your visual CTAs in persuading more clicks and views. Card & end report share data about the viewers' engagement with your interactive element on the video.

Tip: Analyze the potency of your cards based on card type, placement, timing, and duration. Assess the patterns to understand what works best & accordingly amend your strategy to accelerate video clicks.

YouTube Revenue Analytics

YouTube monetization features are available on eligible accounts & you can access the 'Revenue' tab to monitor & track your earnings.

Estimated Revenue & Ad Revenue

The estimated revenue metric denotes net revenue your channel has earned from all Google sold ads & tractions over a selected period. The estimated ad revenue provides you with earnings data for your chosen parameters for AdSense and DoubleClick ads.

Estimated Monetized Playbacks

Estimated monetized playbacks are the figures denoting the number of times a viewer saw at least one ad impression during your video or if they quit watching it at the time of a pre-roll ad.

Transaction Revenue

It provides insights into the estimated net revenue from transactions like paid content for the chosen parameters.

Miscellaneous

Subscription Status

Subscription status is an analytics breakdown of your viewers. It splits between subscribers and non-subscribers & helps you to monitor any change or differences in viewing habits between the two groups.

To increase subscribers, track the video your non-subscribers have watched more. It can give you an idea of what topic you should cover to boost subscribers' number & also you can analyze the content relevance of your channel.

Subscription Status

Subscription Source

Subscription source YouTube analytics display data about which subscription button on your channel homepage is driving subscribers. It unveils the potential opportunities you have missed to earn subscribers.

To boost your subscriber's list, track your most-watched video & inculcate interactive elements motivating subscription.

How To Track YouTube Analytics

Before refining your YouTube content strategy with YouTube analytics, check out the following step to figure out where you can find all your data & numbers:

Steps To See Analytics On YouTube

Step 1: Log in to your YouTube channel & click on the profile icon. A drop-down menu will appear where you’ll find YouTube Studio. Click on it to open the channel dashboard.

How To Track YouTube Analytics

Step 2: On the dashboard, you will notice particular summary metrics. To get in-depth data, clicks on 'Channel Analytics’, or you can click on the ‘Analytics’ present on the left side of the menu.

How To Track YouTube Analytics

Step 3: Based on your required information, check out metrics such as Overview, Reach, Engagement, Audience, and Revenue. If you are looking for a more minute breakdown, click on the ‘Advanced Mode in the dashboard upper right corner. In Advanced mode, you can get metrics of individual videos.

Step 4: Choose all parameters you want to track & click on download to generate your report in Google Sheets or .csv file.

How To Track YouTube Analytics

Advanced mode of Youtube analytics has the feature ‘Compare to’ where you can get data to compare year-over-year channel growth along with the figures on the first 24-hour video performance.

Steps To Track YouTube Analytics On Mobile

You can track YouTube analytics on your mobile device by downloading the YouTube Studio app. The app supports both iOS & Android.

Step 1: Open the YouTube Studio on your mobile device and sign in to your channel account.

Step 2: On the dashboard, you’ll find summary metrics such as Watch time, Views, Subscriber change, etc. To get dates analytics, tap on view more. You’ll see a few summary metrics on the main dashboard. For more details, tap View More.

Step 3: On the appeared screen, you’ll find the analytics tab Overview, Reach, Engagement, and Audience.

Step 4: Tap on the overview section to get the number of subscribers in the last 28 days or track top videos. This tab also shows a real-time view. In the reach tab, you’ll get metrics such as impression, traffic source, IMpression click-through rates, etc.

How To Track YouTube Analytics

Step 5: Tap on the engagement tab to get average view duration, top playlist & top cards. The 'Audience' tab will provide you metrics on gender, age, geography, top subtitles, CC language, watch time from subscribers & other audience-related metrics.

How To Track YouTube Analytics

Popular YouTube Analytics Tools In 2021

Social media analytics tools offer a comprehensive suite to help you analyze viewers, track your ROI, track trending topics, audience behavior, monitor your competitors, discover potential influencers, and many more. Following are the top YouTube analytics tools you can consider to measure your channel metrics. Let’s dive in:

YouTube Studio

Youtube Studio is a comprehensive tool that assists you in managing your channel efficiently with a controlled dashboard. YouTube Studio analytics helps you to analyze right from the quality of your videos to the demographic of your users, card click-through rate to subscriber count & source. Its all-included channel based data-driven approach provides you data on reach, engagement & impression in real-time.

Popular YouTube Analytics Tools In 2021

Along with analytics, Youtube Studio also offers features like content, comments, subtitles, monetization, playlist & copyright. Content feature provides you information about views, visibility, restriction, or interactions of the video.

In the comment section, you can read, manage & reply to all comments; the playlist section assists you in creating & edit a playlist from scratch. Subtitle equips you to add subtitles manually & copyright features empower users to claim ownership of a video that belongs to your brand or business. Monetizing section mange members & assist you in merchandise setting.

Cost: Wondering a tool with all these inclusive features will cost how much? Well, YouTube Studio comes free of cost with every YouTube channel, which is a big plus.

Statusbrew

Statusbrew's YouTube report features offer 12+ in-depth & precise YouTube analytics such as YouTube views, YouTube red views, YouTube likes, dislikes, shares & comments, average view duration, estimated minutes watched & many more. Based on the likes, shares & comments you have received on your videos, you can get the minute breakdown of YouTube engagement analytics. For audience analytics, you can drill down explicit data over a specific date range.

Popular YouTube Analytics Tools In 2021

Popular YouTube Analytics Tools In 2021

Statusbrew report offers you 130+ metrics which is the highest in the SMM industry. Every report is draggable & arrangement is easy, users have complete control over design & every widget is exportable.

Statusbrew further assists you in supervising YouTube communities for your brand by mitigating the noise in the comment section as well. With Statusbrew analytics, get your brand performance report & export the files to share among your team.

Statusbrew allows you to sync comments on your videos to multiple YouTube channels and equips you to manage them from one unified inbox. With its comment moderation features, reply, hide, delete or mark spam or negative comments on your YouTube videos, maintaining your brand image.

Cost: Statusbrew’s 'Standard Plan' starts from $129/month & it offers a free trial.

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Why Measure YouTube Analytics?

YouTube analytics is a data-driven approach that helps you understand the effectiveness of your video content & helps to figure out if there’s a disconnection between content & your goal. Let’ check out why to measure your YouTube channel analytics:

  1. YouTube is the second-most popular social channel for brands after Facebook to post online videos. With 2 billion monthly users, YouTube is growing impressively. Using YouTube analytics, you gain insights on ways to increase your online viewership.

YouTube is a popular platform where users search for explainer videos, video blogs & products videos. Use YouTube analytics for your brand’s views growth by preparing more enticing videos.

  1. Analytics helps you understand what type of content your audience favors. By measuring the data, you can have an in-depth idea of what content resonates with your audience most. Also, you can have an idea of what titles are getting more clicks or what topic is getting more engagement & accordingly can prepare your content strategy.

  2. To prepare engaging YouTube videos, it’s crucial to know your audience inside out. Tracking analytics of YouTube provides you the wholesome idea about your audience interest, demographic data such as gender, location & preferred devices. Implying these data to your upcoming video marketing campaign can assist you in appeal to your audience better.

  3. The insight gained from YouTube analytics can be implied in your other non-video marketing efforts. Measuring video metrics helps you learn more about your audience; you can find ways to deliver a key message or place your call of action.

You can find a new tagline idea, a social strategy, or a band campaign or product idea based on the data offered by analytics & accordingly plan your marketing efforts on other social channels.

YouTube Frequently Asked Questions

1. How Do I Start Creating Videos On YouTube?

To start creating videos on YouTube, you require a YouTube channel. To create a Youtube channel, consider the following steps:

  • Sign in to YouTube through your Google account.

  • After signing in, click on ‘Create Account', and select whether the channel is for you or your business. And after that, you can have a YouTube channel on your Google account.

2. How To Grow My YouTube Channel?

To grow your YouTube channel, create engaging videos. For better reach & engagement ensure to create enticing video titles, write descriptions creatively, and create an attractive thumbnail. Title, description & thumbnail plays a significant role as it allows your viewers to understand what they can expect from the video. Also, focus on hashtags, playlists, end screens to draw audience's attention. Track YouTube analytics to check your channel performance.

3. How Can I Make Money On YouTube?

Creators can make money on YouTube in a certain way. Most creators start with becoming a member of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). Upon acceptance, you can access various monetization products such as Ad and YouTube Premium Revenue generated by your videos; Channel Memberships; Super Chat & Super Stickers; and Brand Connect. Each of these features has certain eligibility requirements.

Summing up!!

YouTube analytics is the nucleus of your channel. These metrics offer you an idea of the current status of the YouTube channel, content performance & many more. Utilizing YouTube analytics ensures quality monitoring & proactively work towards best practices to increase brand growth & conversion rate. Besides, track YouTube analytics to be strategic with your approach.

Measure YouTube data with Statusbrew, streamline your content strategy & make informed decisions. Explore all-know hows of Statusbrew YouTube analytics & book your demo today.

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Rajashree Goswami

Rajashree is a content creator & researcher at Statusbrew. She loves to create content that is expressive & communicative.

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