YouTube Analytics is a powerful tool that gives you insights into the performance of your videos. This information can help you detect which of your videos are performing well and why, measure audience engagement with those videos, and decide where to allocate resources in future video production.
YouTube Analytics was introduced as part of YouTube’s Creator Program back in 2008. At its core, YouTube Analytics tracks all views (unique visitors), watch time (hours watched), and channel subscribers for each individual video on your channel. It also collects data about clicks on links within those videos (organic clicks) and channels’ overall organic reach across all their uploaded content. If you have any Google Adsense ads running on your videos, YouTube will also track impressions from those ads.
The most important thing to remember about using YouTube analytics is that it is not simply an activity tracker; it helps you make informed decisions about how best to produce videos and direct them to specific target audiences. By understanding what engages viewers, whether they are watching live or streaming content when it first appears online, brands can better tailor messaging around products or services offered through their channels.
How to Use YouTube Analytics to Optimize Your Reach
Watch time is one of the most significant metrics to consider when creating or optimizing your YouTube videos. If people are not watching your video for an extended period, it will surely impact your channel’s ranking and visibility.
To properly measure watch time, you need to track three main factors:
- How long do people spend watching your video
- The frequency with which people watch your video
- Engagement level (how much interaction viewers have with the content)
All of these three factors can be easily tracked via YouTube Analytics.
As you may know, the average percentage viewed for a video is a very critical metric on YouTube. The higher your percentage view rate, the more likely it is that people will watch your videos and share them. You can utilize this metric to analyze your videos’ effectiveness in retaining viewers. The longer you can retain a viewer, the more likely YouTube will push more of your content to such an audience. This metric can be found in your watch time report.
A video’s average view duration is one of the primary factors influencing your YouTube’s success. The Average View Duration is calculated as the total number of watch times of your video based on how many times it was viewed, including replays. This metric measures how engaged viewers are with your video. Viewers will quickly leave if your video is not compelling, resulting in a low average view duration. However, if your video is able to engage viewers, then both your average view duration and total watch time will increase simultaneously. As a result, your search engine rankings and recommendations will improve. Your watch time report also includes this metric.
Viewer retention allows you to track the percentage of how many viewers stay and watch your video at every moment. Lower audience retention rates result in lower search engine ranking, higher bounce rates, and lower conversion rates. In addition, audience retention can help you better strategize your future content. By understanding how long viewers watch your videos, you can better determine what the most engaging parts of your video could be indicative of what your next best video topics should be. This can also help you observe low engagement periods of your videos to determine what might be boring to your viewers and to remove them subsequently.
Your videos’ rewatches represent how often viewers rewatch certain sections of your video or the entire video. If a large portion of your audience is watching a particular piece of your video multiple times, it is likely that they are interested in what you are covering at that time. Therefore, the topics mentioned can be used as inspiration for your future video strategy. You can find the relevant data in the absolute audience retention graph. A rise in the curve of the graph represents rewatches.
Engagement is the key to watching your videos and making them successful. Engagement can be increased through social media shares, autoplay content, and more. Engagement can also be increased by adding annotations and overlays to your videos. Sharing your video on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc., can help you spread the word to friends and followers. Adding notes or comments alongside your video footage will allow viewers to make their own judgments. People who share your video demonstrate their trust in and support for your brand. The engagement metrics for your videos can be found in YouTube’s Interactions Report.
For your videos to be successful on YouTube, it is essential that they attract as many clicks as possible. There is usually a considerable bump in impression click-through rates right after you release a video. Your regular subscribers will most likely see your video on the top of their homepage and will click on it. However, once your video reaches beyond your initial target audience, the click-through rate will decrease and remain at a constant level.
As well as using this metric, you can also observe whether viewers actually watch your videos after clicking on them using the average percentage viewed and average view duration. A high click-through rate may indicate a successful video, but if people leave immediately after watching, this could be due to a misleading title or thumbnail. A low click-through rate but high engagement might indicate that the video has a small, but very engaged audience.
Also Read A Comprehensive Guide for Click-Thru Rate
Card clicks can be found at
Analytics > Reach > See More > Impressions by: Content > More Metrics > Cards > Card Clicks
You must optimize your videos for card clicks. Cards are slide-in panels that are designed to prompt viewers to take certain actions, such as watching another video, subscribing to a channel, or clicking through to another website. Card clicks are one of the major indicators that help determine whether or not your video was successful. Based on the click-through rate of each of your cards, you can determine which action your viewers prefer to take. Using this method can help you place the most engaging card on your videos, increasing watch time, and website traffic.
playlist engagement option can be found at:
Analytics > Engagement > See More > Watch Time > More Metrics > Playlists
The playlist feature is a great way of organizing your videos in a manageable way. It is beneficial for your viewers to be able to watch videos they are interested in as they are more likely to continue watching, thereby increasing the amount of time spent on your channel. YouTube’s Playlist Report provides two metrics to determine how engaged your playlist is: average time in the playlist and views per playlist start. The average amount of time viewers spend watching the videos in your playlist is called the average time in the playlist.
It is a measure of how many unique people have viewed your videos during a given period. Using this metric, you can determine how many people are actually consuming your content. This metric can also be used to measure how well the videos are engaging your subscribers. In the case of a low unique viewer count in comparison to your subscriber count, it could mean that some of your subscribers are not watching as many videos as expected. To get your audience to be more engaged with your newly published content, encourage them to enable notifications of updates. The metric for Unique Viewers can be accessed by navigating to the Reach Views and Audience tab in YouTube Studio.
Conclusion
In this blog, we’ve discussed the importance of YouTube Analytics, how to optimize your videos, and some of the most important factors to consider for YouTube analytics. With over 2.1 billion monthly active users, YouTube is simultaneously a powerful tool for businesses and an opportunity to establish a strong presence in the digital space. But getting your videos in front of the right audience and maximum audience can take time and effort. While the benefits of YouTube marketing are evident, it is also quite normal to get overwhelmed by the techniques required to reach the optimal target audience. Yet fret not; Tash’heer offers a quality YouTube marketing plan and manages your YouTube analytics like a pro. So reach out to us to start building a strong YouTube audience.
About the Author: Alishba
