A Must-Read Guide to YouTube Analytics and Metrics

Social Media Marketing goes beyond sharing posts and captions on social media channels. One has to leverage countless strategies and unique concepts to ensure success in the form of a heightened brand presence on all channels available. While platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow you to share content in numerous forms, each of them has a special feature or outlook which sets them apart from the rest.

Instagram, for instance, is good for the artistic expression of a brand’s products and Twitter can allow you to be updated about the latest trends in the best way possible. Similarly, the best platform solely dedicated to Digital Marketing Videos formatted content is YouTube. It is the second biggest online network after Google and this fact alone speaks volumes about the power it holds right now.

YouTube Cards, YouTube Advertisements, and other external tools can be used to market one’s brand properly through videos to reach audiences quickly and effectively. However, like any other platform, a marketer has to be aware of the strategies which are paying off and distinguishing them from ones who are tarnishing the brand’s image. The best way to do so is by using YouTube Analytics. Instead of pinpointing and extracting the results of each metric, we will provide you with a list of 10 most important metrics you need to look out for to improve your marketing process on YouTube. But first, let’s discuss as to why YouTube Analytics matters.

“What’s with the Hype?” YouTube Analytics is your key to unlocking a convenient and accessible market research report which is automatically updated to inform you regarding your content’s progress on YouTube. You can analyze which form of content is receiving the most engagement, what people are saying about you, which content would be good enough to reproduce with tweaking etc. All these things can be very easily found through YouTube Analytics.

How do I find it?

YouTube Analytics can be found by clicking on your profile picture and going to YouTube Studio. From there on, the option of Analytics will be available in the left sidebar. You will be seeing four tabs including ‘Overview, Reach, Engagement and Audience’. You need to choose a period for which you want to view the data as it ranges from days to weeks and months.

If you have an older version of YouTube, you will need to use Creator Studio Classic instead of YouTube Studio. Creator Studio Classic is much more comprehensive, insightful and thorough as compared to YouTube Studio with all the defragmented metrics available for the viewer to see. YouTube Studio will permanently replace Creator Studio Classic soon, so we will be sticking to the updated version as well to avoid confusion. Without further ado, let’s jump into the top metrics and what they mean:

1- Watch Time

It can be found in the overview and is responsible for deciding the amount of time people are spending watching your content. It is the most obvious sign of how well a channel is doing and the engagement it has been receiving from the audience. Therefore, it determines the majority of the YouTube Algorithm for this reason alone.

Your content has to be extraordinary, relevant and useful in terms of its purpose for people to sit through the entire compilation. YouTube determines the worth of your content by this factor and that’s why this metric tops our list.

2- Real-Time Report

Right after Watch Time comes the ‘Real Time Report’. It is also located in the overview section and is updated constantly to give a brief idea of a channel’s performance. At any point you switch to the analytics, you can see a collective version of reports and statistics but also a live updated version in the form of Real-time.

3- Impressions CTR

Found in the ‘Reach’ section, this factor is responsible for enabling your videos being seen by your targeted audiences and how often they view the content, to begin with. It also allows you to see the quality and relevance of your material by linking it directly to the viewer’s response.

4- Unique Viewers

It is located under the ‘Audience’ tab and gives you data regarding the actual amount of audiences who have viewed your content over a selected period.

5- Traffic Sources

Traffic Sources can be found in the ‘Reach’ tab. It enables you to see where most of your traffic is coming from and which sources you need to mark to analyze and direct the investment of your Channel’s CTA.

6- Demographics and Age

These metrics can be easily found in the ‘Audience’ tab. By being aware of the locations and the age group of the audiences your views are coming from, you will be able to get a specific idea of your targeted audience’s interests.