2024 Guide to YouTube Analytics: Metrics, Tools, and Tips

If you’re using YouTube, you need to alimony an eye on your YouTube analytics. Understanding what’s happening under the hood of your YouTube waterworks is the only way to grow.

But what do you need to track, and what tools can help you find that data? We’re glad you asked.

What is YouTube analytics?

YouTube analytics is a term collectively used to refer to the tracking and reporting of key metrics that help you understand the performance of your YouTube channel, as well as individual videos.

YouTube analytics indulge you to see what’s working on your channel, as well as which content is falling flat. This can help guide your strategy so you can grow your waterworks increasingly powerfully over time.

YouTube analytics moreover include demographic information well-nigh your YouTube audience, so you can understand who your subscribers are and produce content that speaks directly to their wants and needs.

20 key YouTube analytics metrics

YouTube waterworks analytics

If you’re using YouTube Studio, click Analytics in the left menu to get started. In Hootsuite, click Analytics in the left sidebar, then segregate New Report > YouTube.

1. Channel views: The number of views your unshortened waterworks conglomerate over the selected time period.
   Channel watch time: The total value of time, in hours, people spent watching all the videos on your waterworks over a given period.
2. Subscribers: The total number of subscribers to your YouTube channel.
3. Subscriber growth: The number of new subscribers you’ve gained minus any you lost.
4. Realtime: A real time performance report for the last 48 hours or 60 minutes. This is a good way to get an early impression of how newly uploaded videos perform immediately without they launch. You can moreover find out when your YouTube waterworks views peak, giving you insight into your best time to post.

Source: YouTube Studio

5. Top posts: A snapshot of your top performing content based on views, over a given period. By adjusting the timeframe to Lifetime, you can identify your all-time weightier performing videos.
6. Impressions: The number of times thumbnails for your videos were shown to YouTube viewers. This does not include external impressions like website embeds or social shares.
   Impressions click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked on a thumbnail on YouTube to view your videos.
7. Average view duration: How long the stereotype viewer watches your videos surpassing clicking away.
8. Top remixed: Your content most remixed or used in Shorts and the number of remix views. Remixes can help to modernize your waterworks visibility and video views since they include tags that momentum traffic when to your channel.
9. Videos widow to/removed from playlists: Similar to remixed, playlists proffer your content to a wider audience.

Source: Hootsuite Analytics

10. Top referral sources: Monitor where and how people find your videos, both on and off YouTube.
11. Unique viewers: An estimate of the total number of people who watched your videos over a given period. Note: If one person watches the same video three times, it will only count once for unique viewers, but three times for waterworks views.
12. When your viewers are on YouTube: This one is self-explanatory. Use this info to schedule uploads at optimal times.
13. Watch time from subscribers: How much of your total watch time comes from viewers who are subscribed to your channel.
14. Audience demographics: The age, gender, location, and language statistics for the people who watch your videos on YouTube. Tip: This information can help you plan content geared toward your specific audience. We’ve got a whole blog post on how to find and speak to your target market that can help you icon this out.

YouTube video analytics

All the metrics we’ve covered so far wield to your overall channel. But you moreover need to track metrics for specific videos, so you can drill lanugo to see what’s really working.

Within the YouTube Studio app, click any video from the Analytics overview screen to see the stats for that specific video. Using the Reach, Engagement, and Regulars tabs for each video, you can see these specific metrics for the video in question, rather than for the unshortened channel.

15. Views: The number of times your video has been watched, including repeat views from the same person.
16. Subscribers: The number of people who subscribed without watching this particular video. This metric provides one of the strongest indications that a video unfluctuating with viewers. On the flip side, you can moreover see the number of subscribers lost with a unrepealable video.
17. Watch time: The cumulative value of time people have spent watching this specific video.
18. Average view duration: The unscientific value of time in minutes watched for each view of the selected video.
19. New viewers: Videos with the highest number of new vs. returning viewers are urgently growing your audience.
20. Key moments for regulars retention: This metric shows you which moments grabbed (or lost) your audience’s attention. If you have issues with your stereotype view duration, review this to see what is working. If you notice any big dips, take a squint at the video itself to see what might be driving people away.

Source: YouTube Studio

How to see YouTube analytics for other channels

You cannot see YouTube analytics for other channels through YouTube Studio. However, you can get information well-nigh the content from other channels that your regulars is watching.

On your channel’s Regulars tab, trammels the pursuit two YouTube video analytics metrics:

• Content your regulars watches: What your regulars is watching when they’re not on your channel. Use this report to find inspiration for your own channel, collaboration opportunities, or ideas for your thumbnails. Then, compile that information with these 30 YouTube promotional tactics.
• Channels your regulars watches: This report shows you the channels your regulars is most interested in. The same strategy as whilom applies here.

You need third-party software to compare multiple finance of your own or to requite you a peek into your competitors’ analytics.

Want to compare analytics for other YouTube channels you own? You can add all of your channels to Hootsuite and compare them within Hootsuite Analytics.

Source: Hootsuite Analytics

YouTube analytics tools like SocialBlade (see below) indulge you to compare your performance versus any other public YouTube channel.

4 YouTube analytics tools for 2024

1. YouTube Studio

Source: YouTube Studio

YouTube Studio is the home of the native analytics in YouTube. It’s the most robust YouTube analytics tool available. It’s expressly useful for those who are primarily focused on growing their YouTube channel. (As opposed to viewing YouTube efforts in the context of a larger social strategy.)

A particularly useful set of analytics reporting features are found within YouTube Studio’s Advanced Mode. It offers the worthiness to drill lanugo into data, compare content performance, and export data. Sophisticated marketing teams will find this mode a veritable treasure trove of information.

There are tons of features in Advanced Mode that you don’t want to sleep on. Google Support created a very useful map of the misogynist features; trammels it out to ensure you’re not missing anything.

Source: Google Support

Some of the most useful reporting options include:

• Groups: Group similar videos to compare themes, styles, and lengths. Squint for larger themes and potential series opportunities.
• New viewers who returned: This highlights new viewers who returned to your waterworks to watch flipside video. Says Paige Cooper, Hootsuite’s Inbound Marketing Lead (Web & Video): “I think of it as a list of videos that have some kind of magic sparkle pebbles that turns viewers into fans.”

2. Hootsuite

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Hootsuite is a valuable social analytics tool for those who want to unriddle YouTube in the context of their overall social performance. You can unravel out YouTube into its own report. But you can moreover view key performance metrics slantingly those for your social finance on other networks.

This is expressly useful for social marketers who need to produce reporting for senior stakeholders. They usually want to review the success of the team’s social efforts at a upper level.

Hootsuite moreover offers the wholesomeness of stuff simple to use and understand. All the key metrics are on one screen.

3. Socialblade

Source: Social Blade on the Chrome Web Store

Socialblade allows you to see metrics like views, subscribers, subscriber growth rate, and unscientific revenue for any public YouTube channel. Of course, that includes your own waterworks too, as long as it’s public.

They offer browser extensions that show you these statistics within your browser for any YouTube video, as you watch it.

4. VidIQ

Source: VidIQ

VidIQ is a third-party tool that scrapes data to get metrics you can’t get natively. This app will let you see views per hour and pull analytics data from your competitors, so you can wangle YouTube analytics for other channels. VidIQ has plenty of features that can largest your channel, like recommendations to modernize your YouTube SEO in areas such as your title and description.

How to use YouTube analytics tools for weightier results

Check in on a regular basis

To make the most of the data you find in your chosen YouTube analytics tool, you need to trammels in regularly. Things can transpiration fast, and you can’t seem that the content strategies that have worked in the past will work in the future.

For example, if there’s a significant transpiration in subscriber growth from the average, you should dig for the rationalization right away. Did you post increasingly videos than usual? Fewer? Did one video in particular do particularly well or poorly?

Tip: Subscribers often watch twice as much video as non-subscribers. If your subscribers are not making up the zillion of your watch time, you may not be making the most of your subscriber base. Try creating a increasingly resulting posting schedule so your subscribers know when they should expect new content and make it a habit to watch your new videos when they go live.

Hootsuite Analytics makes it easier to stay on top of your YouTube metrics with the worthiness to schedule will-less reports, so the data comes right to your inbox.

Look for patterns

While each of the metrics whilom reveals its own useful data, the information picture as a whole gets increasingly detailed when you squint for patterns to emerge.

For example, squint for similarities between videos that have upper or low click-through rates. Over time, this will help you understand what tideway works weightier to persuade your particular viewers to click.

Likewise, keeping an eye on view elapsing can help you understand if viewers get what they expected once they click. A lower-than-average view elapsing may indicate a mismatch between what you promise and what you deliver. You may need to revise your thumbnail and unravelment strategy, expressly if it has recently changed.

Since watch time is a key ranking factor in the YouTube algorithm, this is flipside important one to watch for changes. Videos with higher watch time are increasingly likely to towards in search results and recommendations, bringing new eyeballs to your channel. Can you find a pattern to what makes viewers stick around, or causes them to leave?

Finally, watch for waffly patterns in when your viewers are online and retread your posting schedule as needed. (Tip: Trammels out Hootsuite Analytics for a detailed heatmap.) If you have an zippy Community Tab, make sure an admin is misogynist to create posts and respond to comments when your viewers are most likely to be online.

Make the most of your weightier content

YouTube analytics offer useful insights to help you maximize the effect of your weightier content.

For example, if a video is often reached through search, consider subtracting it to a playlist to help people discover your related content. Visitors who find your content through search are likely to be new to your channel. So, videos that rank well for your search terms can be a useful entry point, as long as you structure your content powerfully to alimony people watching.

Likewise, try reshuffling the order of your playlists to put popular videos with the highest stereotype view elapsing at the top. People are increasingly likely to make it all the way through these top videos and protract watching your playlist. The increasingly the watch, the increasingly likely they are to subscribe.

Watch for potential collaborators – and competitors

Understanding where your YouTube views come from can help you spot prime collaboration opportunities, as well as potential competitors who may be nipping at your heels.

First, under How viewers find your videos, click on Suggested Videos. This shows you videos for which your content is seeming in the suggested sidebar. That ways YouTube thinks your content is related.

Since these videos are once sending viewers your way, they may be unconfined collaborators. But remember that they are not sending you that traffic by nomination – suggestions are based on the YouTube algorithm. So, they may unquestionably be competitors. Have a squint at their content and use some of the competitor wringer tools whilom to get a largest sense of whether they are likely to be friend or foe.

You can moreover find potential collaborators by looking at External sources. This lists websites that are driving embedded views as well linking to your content. Moreover squint at playlists on which you’re included. These sites and channels unmistakably love your content, since they’re once featuring it. These could be good candidates for a creator partnership or other collaboration efforts.

Finally, take a squint at the Content your regulars watches reports. This shows content your regulars watches that may or may not be directly related to your niche. If you have a shared regulars and don’t compete, there may be a endangerment for a unique collaboration.

Let Hootsuite make growing your YouTube waterworks easier. Get scheduling, promotion, and marketing tools all in one place for your unshortened team. Sign up self-ruling today.

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