YouTube Analytics shows up when you’ve started using YouTube to upload and share videos, and when you’ve started wondering who is watching your videos and how they can get more views and better engagement.
When creating a fancy YouTube channel, the requirement is that you have to understand who your audience is and how they interact with your videos. Luckily, YouTube Analytics is to the rescue to tell you a lot more about your audience, what they like, and what kind of content you need to create to be successful.
Here are some overviews of YouTube Analytics to help you get the most out of this tool. How to get started with this tool, the insights it provides, and any possible information available on your result that you can use to improve your results.
To get started, log into your Google account and navigate to your YouTube channel page, then at the top of your channel page, click views to go directly to your channel analytics.
YouTube Analytics overview
After following the instructions mentioned above, you are now looking at the Analytics overview of your channels. If it’s on the default setting, it gives you data from the last 28 days, but on the other hand, you can change that to whatever time period you want to retrieve analysis from. The data that you are going to retrieve from this page is beneficial if you are looking to obtain a general report on how your channel is working. If you want to look for a small snapshot of your channel’s performance, the overview is the right place.
It should be noted that YouTube Analytics is also based on Pacific Standard Time, updates once a day, and may have a delay of 72 hours. If you really need to search to get the most out of YouTube Analytics, you may need to go into each detailed report.
Watch time reports
This is where you’ll find the essential analytics on YouTube, breaking down how your different videos and their quality keep your audience engaged. Watch time reports provide insight into the overall performance of your channel and can also be used to drill down into the performance of individual videos.
- Points of view they are the most basic measure of your video’s success, as it shows how many times your video has been viewed. But they don’t take into account the users who click on your content and leave immediately because the views are considered to be of equal value, however, the time the user watched your video.
- View time Provides a more accurate breakdown of your content status, YouTube summarizes the time people have spent watching your videos, measures the estimated time your audience has viewed your video, and shows how many minutes of your videos have been collectively viewed on your channel.
- Audience retention beautify how adequately your video holds your audience. You will be able to see how much your viewers are watching of each video, which parts are causing them to abandon your content. It can be broken down further to see your absolute audience retention and relative audience retention, showing how your video compares to other YouTube videos of similar length and helping you determine which length video is best suited for you.
- Demography It gives you a complete view of who exactly is watching your video to better market them. YouTube also provides information on the demographic breakdown of your audience by gender, age, and also geographic location so that you can modify your message respectively.
- Playback locations show the sites or pages your video is being viewed on. It is one of the best things about YouTube when you create fun and entertaining videos, your videos can be shared in different ways, embedding your videos on your own website or blog. The watch locations report separates the views from your YouTube page, apps, or any website you embed your video on. It will also give you the estimated watch minutes and average viewing duration, but broken down by location.
- Traffic sources provide data on how your audience reaches your video. There are different types of traffic sources and this includes YouTube search, suggested YouTube videos that can be found on YouTube by clicking on a thumbnail, YouTube channel page, and YouTube playlist. You will be able to see the searchability of your video while diagnosing which referral platform is earning you the most traffic.
- Devices show if your audience is watching your video, be it on their computer, mobile phone, tablet and game console. So you could refer to them to create shorter or longer videos that would look better from each device.
Participation reports
Views are just one part of building a thriving YouTube channel. As you start modifying your content to share on YouTube and build an audience, you may want to look at what kind of engagement your videos are generating.
- Subscribers indicate how many subscribers you have gained and at the same time how many subscribers you have lost. They are important because they are the users who watch, engage with, and possibly influence other people to view your videos. Monitor your subscribers on a regular basis or as scheduled to help you diagnose whether or not you are successful in doing this. Create videos that keep people coming back and wanting more.
- Likes and dislikes condense the number of people who liked and disliked your video. It should be noted that you should not focus on reaching your goals, you should work to inspire and entertain your viewers as they are essential to your success.
- Comments provide you with the amount of feedback your video has collected. Comments can be a great way to find out what the audience’s perception of your video is, and at the same time engage with them by answering their questions or responding to their comments.
- Exchange emphasizes how many times your videos have been shared and where they have been shared.
- Annotations Provide insight into your video annotations performance, click-through rate, and close rate. It will give you valuable information on how effective the call-to-action features of your videos are.
The essential measure of success are those audiences that are attentive to your videos, your brand, and the message behind your videos. They show their support through their likes, shares, and comments on their videos.