Using Analytics to Grow
Your Channel
YouTube gives you at-a-glance and in-depth analytical data for
your videos and channels.
From your Dashboard, you can see the performance of your latest
video compared to your typical video performance.
You’ll see how it ranks against your last ten videos, its views,
average view duration, and watch time.
The Channel dashboard also gives you a quick glance at your
overall channel analytics.
You can see your current subscribers, a summary of your views
and watch times during the past 28 days and your top videos
from the past 48 hours.
Now let’s do a deep dive into the analytics page. You can look at
your channel as a whole, as a video group, or for a specific video.
Remember that you can change the date range you want to look
at for your analytics.
You can also hover over any metric in analytics to get more
information about it, or click the “See More” button on any card
to see additional data or to compare different metrics, time
periods, videos, or groups.
Start with your Overview tab. This will give you personalized
information about views, watch time, subscribers, and estimated
revenue if you’re in the YouTube Partner Program.
You’ll see how your video is doing compared to your typical past
performance. You can also click on each metric to update the
graph below them.
The graph will chart day-by-day changes in that metric. The chart
also shows when new videos were uploaded, so you can chart
responses to each one.
The Overview tab also shows real-time activity for your videos
within the last 48 hours, and your top videos for your selected
time-period.
You can also see a snapshot of the performance for your last ten
videos. If you’re looking at a specific video, the Overview tab will
show views, watch time, and subscribers added.
You’ll also see audience retention, likes vs. dislikes, and the real
time activity for that video.
The Reach tab is your central source for information about how
many viewers you’re reaching and how you’re reaching them. This
included impressions, click-through rates, and unique viewers.
Impressions are counted every time a viewer comes across one of
your thumbnails on YouTube.
Click-Through Rate shows how often the viewer clicked on that
video to watch it. Unique Viewers show how many new viewers
came to watch your video over a set time.
The Reach tab also shows various information about your video’s
traffic sources and which surfaces are driving viewers to your
video. There is also the “Viewership Funnel” graph, which shows
“Impressions and How They Led to Watch Time.”
You can improve the chances of YouTube recommending your
video by increasing your click-through rate and video watch time.
The Engagement tab gives you information on viewer attention. It
shows watch time, average view duration, and end screens
(telling you which elements are best resonating with your
audience).
At the individual video level, this tab shows you information on
audience retention, likes vs dislikes, and (if you’ve added them)
the end screen element click rate.
The Audience tab tells you who is watching your videos. This
shows you unique viewers, average view per user, and
subscribers.
These metrics give you an idea of the size of your audience, as
well as their level of engagement.
You can also see watch time from subscribers. At the channel
level, you’ll see the Subscriber Bell Notifications card, which
shows the percentage of subscribers who have enabled
notifications from your channel and from YouTube.
The Audience tab also gives you information on the viewers
watching your videos: their gender, age group, and where they’re
located.
If you have a monetized channel, there will also be a “Revenue”
tab which gives you information about your revenue.
