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WHAT IS YOUTUBE ANALYTICS
Whether you're a small business owner, a content creator, or someone who wants to get more out of your YouTube channel, YouTube analytics is a powerful tool that can help you create content relevant to your target audience. Youtube Analytics collects data from your channel and helps you analyse how well a video is performing with respect to the viewers and other metrics. You could be wondering, "Where do I even begin?" This article aims to provide you with a working knowledge of Youtube Analytics to understand your audience better and set you on the path to creating well-optimised videos.
NEED FOR YOUTUBE ANALYTICS
Youtube Analytics can be exploited to create the best possible content. Without knowing the basics, you will be flying blind when it comes to the metrics that matter. With YouTube Analytics, you can make data-driven decisions that will help you achieve your goals. Even the best content creators need references to make sure their videos are still relatable for their audience. So, data accumulated from both old and new videos can be used to compare and determine what material is connecting with the traffic. Youtube Analytics thus, helps in modifying content strategy and generating effective videos.
IMPORTANT METRICS
Youtube Analytics provides accurate and an impressive amounts of data on various metrics. When starting out, there are certain basic metrics to look out for-
Views
This is the number of legitimate views on your videos, Shorts, and live streams. Impressions- Impressions refer to the number of times the thumbnail of your video was shown to the audience on Youtube. If the Youtube algorithm picks your video, it is counted as an impression. Impression trends help to understand how well your video is performing.
Click Through Rate
Often abbreviated as CTR, this metric tells you how often a viewer clicks on the thumbnail of your video. It is calculated as a percentage with the following formula- number of clicks/number of impressions x 100. A high CTR shows that your content is engaging to a large audience. However, if you are struggling with CTR, this is your sign to get creative with your videos and their thumbnails. Watch Time- It is the total amount of time viewers have spent watching your videos, calculated in hours.
Audience Retention
This metric determines if your content is appealing and how effectively various parts of your video capture viewers' attention.
Traffic sources
Traffic sources analyse where your channel’s audience is coming from. It can be from YouTube searches, external websites, or from suggested videos.
Demographics
Demographics is information about the age, gender, location, and other characteristics of the audience.
Revenue
To better monetise your videos, Youtube analytics tracks the amount of money earned. RPM or Revenue Per Mille and CPM or Cost per 1000 impressions are metrics used to analyse the revenue at the video level and channel level. More about revenue has been discussed below.
Subscribers
This metric counts the number of people that have subscribed to your channel. The subscriber count of your channel shows that your content is engaging for the audience and they are likely to come back for more videos.
USING YOUTUBE ANALYTICS TO CREATE BETTER CONTENT
For every channel, Youtube analytics can be accessed from the Youtube Creator Studio. There are various tabs that track various aspects of content, each of which has been discussed in detail below:
Overview
The overview tab, as the name suggests provides a general overview of the performance of the channel as a whole. It shows various content-related metrics like views, watch time, number of subscribers and earnings that helps in comparing performance over a period of time. The graph on this tab provides a daily analysis of how the content is faring among viewers. It can also be customised to provide an analysis month-wise, year wise or for all time. The overview tab highlights the top-performing videos, making it easier for content creators to build a strategy. This tab has reports on your top content ranked by views, the performance of videos and top remixed content, used to make Shorts.
Content
The Content tab summarises how your audience finds your content, what they are watching, and how they interact with the content you create. This tab presents a visual of your views, view duration, impressions, subscribers, etc. It also shows you your most popular content and the number of times the content was shown to viewers(post impression). The content tab can help you to understand how your videos are performing. This information enables you to make informed decisions about which topics to cover and what types of videos to produce in the future. You can find impressions of your videos on this tab. Playlists are an effective way to make new viewers watch more of your content. The views on your playlists are tracked in the content tab. If you use your channel to do Live streams, the view count on these Lives is also tracked. Traffic on videos and the devices used to access them can also be tracked on the content tab.
Audience
Have you ever wondered who watches your videos? The audience tab of Youtube analytics is where you find the answer as it provides information on your viewers, demographic patterns and behavioural traits. Audience information tab gives a detailed analysis on the active subscriber count, the returning & new viewers, unique viewers, subscribers, and members of your channel. Other channels and types of videos being accessed by users can also be seen by the content creator as a reference. You can view the average watch time of your audience as well. Youtube Analytics uses the IP address of the audience to analyse the location where your video was most accessed from. It also presents a report on age, gender and other demographics. Youtube analytics also suggests the best time to upload new videos so that the video has more views.
Revenue
Since Youtube videos are being actively monetised by channels, the Revenue tab keeps track of how much the channel or a video earns or can expect to earn. This tab tracks the earnings per video of a channel. RPM or Revenue Per Mille is a metric that represents how much money you’ve earned per 1,000 video views. It is based on revenue sources including Ads, Channel memberships, YouTube Premium revenue, Super Chat, and Super Stickers. CPM or Cost per 1,000 impressions is a metric that represents how much money advertisers are spending to show ads on YouTube. The more an advertiser pays for that ad, the more money you make. Your CPM is a good indicator of how valuable advertisers find your videos and audience for achieving their own business goals. This information can help the channel or creator to make informed decisions about how to better monetize the channel in the future.
Research
This tab is a relatively new feature added to the Youtube Analytics dashboard that gives the creator a list of keywords being used actively by the audience on Youtube to search for new content. However, since this is a new feature, it has not been fully developed to provide more data. Many users prefer to use Chrome Plug-ins like TubeBuddy or VidIQ to track keywords for their channels.
CONCLUSION
YouTube is a dynamic platform, and analytics is crucial for better results and overcoming problems like a limited reach. However, it should be noted that more than a tool, Youtube analytics is your opportunity to grow, connect with your audience and create content that truly resonates with them. By focusing on building a community of loyal and engaged viewers, you can create content that not only drives engagement but also helps you achieve your long-term goals. Knowing the basics of Youtube analytics can therefore take your channel to the next level.
