YouTube Analytics comes in when you have started using YouTube to upload and share videos and when you started to wonder who are watching your videos and how do they can get more views and better engagement.
When you build a dashing YouTube channel, the requirement is, you must understand who your audience is and how do they engage with your videos. As luck would have it, YouTube Analytics is to the rescue to tell you a lot more about your audience, what do they like, and what kind of content you should create to become successful.
Here are some overviews of YouTube Analytics to help you make the most of this tool. How to get started using this tool, the insights it provides, and any possible information available in your result that you can use to improve your results.
Get started by signing in to your Google account and navigate to your YouTube channel page, then at the top of your channel page, click on views to go directly to your channel’s analytics.
YouTube Analytics Overview
After following the said instructions above, you are now looking at your channels Analytics Overview. If you are on default settings, it gives you data for the past 28 days, but in another hand, you can change that to any period of time you wish to retrieve analytics from. The data that you are going to retrieve from this page is beneficial if you are looking to get a general report of how your channel is working. If you wanted to look for a slight capture of your channel’s performance, then Overview is the right place to go.
It is to be noted that YouTube Analytics are also based on Pacific Standard Time, updated once a day and might have a delay of 72 hours. If you really need to look to make the most of YouTube Analytics, you might need to hop into each detailed report.
Watch time Reports
This is where you will find the essential analytics on YouTube, it breaks down how your different videos and its quality are keeping your audience engaged. Watch Time Reports dispense insight of the overall performance of your channel and it can also be used to swim deeper into the performance of individual videos.
- Views are the most basic measurement of your video’s success as it shows how many times your video has been watched. But they do not take into account users that click on your content and leave immediately because views are considered equal value nevertheless how long the user watched your video.
- Watch time offers a more precise breakdown of the status of your content, YouTube sums up the time that people have spent watching your videos, it measures the estimated time that your audience has watched your video and showing how many minutes of your videos have collectively been watched on your channel.
- Audience Retention embellish how suitably your video is maintaining its audience. You will be able to see how much your viewers are watching from each video, which parts are causing them to leave your content. It can be broken down more further to see your absolute audience retention and your relative audience retention which shows how your video compares to other YouTube videos of similar length and will help you determine which length video best fits you.
- Demographics provides you a comprehensive look at who exactly is watching your video to better market them. YouTube also provides insight into the demographic breakdown of your audience by gender, age, and also geographic location so that you can modify your messaging respectively.
- Playback locations show any sites or pages your video is being viewed on. It’s one of the great things about YouTube when you create fun and entertaining videos, your videos could be shared in different ways, by embedding your videos to their own website or blog. The Playback locations report separates views from your YouTube page, apps, or any website that you embed your video on. It will also give you estimated minutes watched, and average view duration, but broken down by location.
- Traffic sources provide data on how your audience arrives at your video. There are different types of traffic sources and this include YouTube search, YouTube suggested videos which can be found on YouTube by clicking on a thumbnail, YouTube channel page, and YouTube playlist. You will be able to see how searchable your video while diagnosing which referral platform is gaining you the most traffic.
- Devices show if your audience is watching your video whether on their Computer, Mobile phone, Tablet, and Game console. So you could refer to them to create shorter or long videos that would be better viewed from each gadget.
Engagement Reports
Views are only a part of building a flourishing YouTube channel. As you are kick-starting to modify your content to share on YouTube and build an audience, you may want to pursue which type 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 are watching, engaging, and possibly influencing other people to watch your videos. Monitor your subscribers on a regular basis or as scheduled to help you diagnose if you’re or you’re not successful in doing this. Create videos that would make people come back and wanting for more.
- Likes and Dislikes condense the number of people who liked and disliked your video. It is to 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 the number of comments your video has gathered. Comments can be a great way for you to know what is your audience’s’ perception about the video, at the same time to engage with them by answering their question or responding to their comments.
- Sharing emphasizes the number of times your videos have been shared and where your videos have been shared to.
- Annotations furnish information on your video annotations’ performance, their click-through, and close rate. It will give you valuable information on how effective are the call-to-action features of your videos.
The essential measure of success are those audiences who are attentive on your videos, your brand, and the message behind your videos. They show their support through their likes, shares, and comments on your videos.
