YouTube is the second-largest search engine globally, second only to Google. If you’re a company seeking to make use of this platform to grow, it is essential to be aware of whether the YouTube marketing strategies are successful or not. YouTube Analytics can help you track your YouTube marketing initiatives and offer you information that will assist you in creating useful content with which your YouTube subscribers can interact, and increase your YouTube channel’s YouTube views, in addition to helping you increase the number of real YouTube subscribers. So, prepare to enter YouTube Analytics’ world. YouTube Analytics.
Use YouTube analytics
- Log in to your YouTube account and click on the profile icon on the upper right-hand corner and then Creator Studio, next to the icon of a cogwheel.
- You’ll be taken onto The Creator Studio dashboard, from where you’ll be able to view the basic statistics in your display.
- A menu will be displayed on the left side of the panel. From there, you can select Analytics to access the main dashboard to track YouTube analytics.
Once you have an idea of what YouTube Analytics is, let’s get right into the essential indicators you should be tracking to gain access to data that will help you promote business growth, boost numbers of YouTube subscribers, and gain more YouTube views.
The three most important sections for measuring metrics include:
- Interaction reports
- Revenue reports
- Watch time reports
Through the use of the watch time reports, you will learn more about who viewers are watching your videos, how they discover you, and on which devices they are viewing them.
Watch Time Reports
Time to watch and views could be on the same page; however, they’re not the same. YouTube views are calculated in terms of 1 view when a video has been watched for a minimum of 30 seconds. The time of watching shows how many hours someone had spent watching your videos over the time frame before they watched it. You can find comprehensive breakdowns of videos by choosing the video you want to watch at the bottom of the screen. While YouTube views are considered a vanity metric because their numbers are manipulated, they are believed to influence the growth of your channel because the higher volume of YouTube views could mean better-optimized content and higher rankings to ensure that your videos appear in the search engines.
An easier and more accurate measurement is the average time to view, the time spent watching multiplied by total YouTube views. The average view duration can be analyzed for each video or your entire channel. The likelihood of your content appearing in suggested/recommended video lists on YouTube increases when you have a higher average view duration since it means that you have high retention rates and can keep people glued to YouTube.
Audience retention
Audience retention metrics help determine the viewer’s engagement over time. It will also list your top videos performing well and offers a comparative analysis of your video against those of other videos on YouTube. The amount of retention in the audience is determined by the percentage of the video that is watched. Two types of audience retention are recorded on YouTube:
Absolute audience retention
With 100% audience retention, it is possible to determine which video clips are the most seen and the areas where viewers are dropping off. It can be used for your most popular videos to determine which content YouTube subscribers and other viewers are most enjoying and for less performed videos to obtain insights into the kind of content that your YouTube subscribers and other users aren’t interested in.
The 15 minutes at the beginning of your video on YouTube are the most important. If you observe a large decline in the rate, start by addressing your subject from the beginning and then shorten or change your intro. Include a different description of the thumbnail or video that describes the content more precisely.
Relative audience retention
Relative audience retention can help you evaluate the performance of your video compared to similar videos posted on YouTube that are equally long.
Demographics
Through demographics, you gain access to data about the age, place of residence, as well as gender of people that are driving the number of YouTube views. It’s essential to know your target audience to help promote the growth of your business on YouTube. This way, you can see whether you’re reaching the people you set out to target when you began your YouTube marketing. Find ways to customize your content to appeal to the people you’re hoping to reach, or perhaps discover a new audience that you can serve with your content that you’ve never thought of.
Playback locations
Playback locations are where you can determine whether the content can be watched on YouTube or somewhere else. Knowing the playback location for your videos can help you decide on the best way to spend your advertising dollars across different platforms to ensure you increase your return on investment. You will better comprehend your viewers’ viewing patterns that will help make better-informed marketing campaigns.
To find out about the traffic generated by your videos by outside sources, choose “Embedded in external websites and apps,” which will provide details of the various places where your videos have been viewed.
Traffic sources
An analysis of your traffic sources will assist you in understanding the ways people are finding your content. Are they coming from your appearance on a YouTuber’s playlist? Are you using influencer marketing and YouTube advertisements? Are you able to determine if it is due to people using a specific search term? It is possible to determine the sources working to boost your business’s expansion and which ones might benefit from some assistance.
Devices
Using this measure, it is possible to track the percentage of content viewed on tablets, desktops, or mobile phones. You can also track the number of people who watch your content on smart TVs or games consoles. The devices they use dictate the kind of content that is watched. Knowing the devices that people consume content on will allow you to decide what kind of content to post to gain more actual YouTube subscribers and increase the number of YouTube views for your videos.
Translations
If your videos are accessible in multiple languages, This metric will assist you in keeping track of which languages viewers are viewing your content in.
Interaction reports
Engagement/interaction metrics show how well you capture your viewers’ attention and sustain it with engaging content.
YouTube subscribers
The primary data for YouTube subscribers comprised a total number of YouTube subscribers gained and kept over the specified time frame. You can also select the Source option in the YouTube subscribers metrics to find out which YouTube videos have contributed the largest to both an increase and decrease of the number of YouTube subscribers your channel has. More YouTube subscribers signify that they are informed every time you post new videos. Engaged YouTube subscribers can result in more YouTube views to earn your channel a higher ranking. You can also buy YouTube subscribers from trusted websites.
Likes and dislikes
Likes and dislikes enable viewers to engage in the content and express their opinions with the click of a button. More likes result in higher YouTube SEO rankings on your page. If you’ve created an online video about a controversial topic in views, The dislikes of the viewers reflect the views of those who might be on the opposite sides of the debate. However, dislikes do not remember your ideal audience’s opinion; however, keeping track of both of them is essential in making decisions regarding the future of your content.
Comments
Comments allow you to keep track of the number of comments you’ve got on your channel, as well as on specific videos. For videos popular in your YouTube channel, you’ll be able to review comments posted to determine what is causing your audience to engage. Replying to comments is a fantastic way to show your audience that you’re interested and paying attention to their feedback, which can help increase the audience of YouTube subscribers. Also, you should be watching comments to identify spam or abuse and ensure you’re maintaining the safety of your YouTube subscribers.
Shares
Shares offer more valuable information than likes because they indicate that users are encouraging other people to watch your videos. By using filters for sharing services, you will be able to check the social media platforms that the videos you share on and filter shares by date, location, or device.
Cards and annotations
Presently, annotations and cards are only available on desktops. You can monitor click-through rates for the cards and annotations for your videos.
End screens
End screens are a fantastic way to keep users on mobile devices. Furthermore, you can monitor your app’s performance by comparing the number of clicks to the number of screens that end.
Videos in playlists
You can see the number of times viewers have added your video to their playlists using this measurement in either an overall image or individual videos.
Revenue reports
January 2018 witnessed YouTube expanding its regulations on monetization on its channel. Only YouTube channels with at least 4,000 hours of watched time and at minimum 1 000 YouTube subscribers can be eligible to run advertisements if they’ve complied with YouTube’s guidelines.
The Revenue report data allows you to determine how much you earn through YouTube in a particular period and the sources of the income streams.
The estimated revenue is the total earnings from Google’s sale of ads, while the estimated revenue from ads shows expected revenue generated by AdSense or DoubleClick ads.
The information from the revenue reports will help you keep track of which videos are the most successful, examine patterns in earnings, and adjust your marketing strategy on YouTube in line with the results.
With the data you gain access to via YouTube Analytics, with the information you get from YouTube Analytics, you will be able to make better decisions about your YouTube marketing campaign and help accelerate the growth of your business.