"2024 Approved  From Views to Revenue  Simplifying the Process with a 3-Step Framework for Monitoring YouTube Income"

"2024 Approved From Views to Revenue Simplifying the Process with a 3-Step Framework for Monitoring YouTube Income"

Thomas Lv13

From Views to Revenue: Simplifying the Process with a 3-Step Framework for Monitoring YouTube Income

There have been lots of user queries similar to the one above about how to check YouTube income lately. Honestly, YouTube has made it easy for users to track their revenue analytics on the platform, thus making it easy for creators to track how much they make and other revenue data.

So, if you don’t know how to check YouTube income, don’t worry, this article will teach you the simple steps to check your YouTube. Plus, you’ll find out how your YouTube earnings are calculated. Just stick with us.

  1. Post quality videos
  2. Upload videos regularly
  3. Promote your Videos

Part 1: Follow the steps below to check your YouTube earnings

The process of checking YouTube income is pretty straightforward. So, regardless of what device you’re using to check, we’ve briefly explained the step-by-step instructions to carry out your YouTube income check within a few clicks.

Check on a computer

To check YouTube income on your PC or Mac, you just have to do the following;

Step1 Open the browser app on your computer and sign in to your YouTube Studio .

Step2 Click Analytics from the left side of the screen.

how to check youtube income on pc 1

Step3 On the Analytics screen, select Revenue from the top side of the screen to check your YouTube income.

There, you’ll find your YouTube income and other necessary data that you might need.

Check on a Mobile Device

The process of checking YouTube income on an Android or iOS device is also straightforward, and you can use either the YouTube app or the YouTube Studio app to perform the operation. The steps below explain the procedure;

YouTube App

Step1 Make sure you have the latest version of the YouTube app on your phone. If not, you can install it from Google Play Store or App Store.

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 1

Step2 Log in to your YouTube account and tap on the Profile icon at the top side. Then, select Your Channel.

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 2

Step3 Tap the Analytics icon from the middle menu. Your YouTube channel income and other data will be displayed on your phone screen.

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 3

YouTube Studio App

Step1 Launch the YouTube Studio app on your Android or iPhone.

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 4

Step2 Tap Analytics from the bottom menu and select Revenue from the top of the screen.

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 5

The information that you’ll find in the YouTube revenue analytics includes the following;

  • RPM (Revenue Per Mile); This is the metric that displays how much a creator has earned per 1000 video views.
  • Playback-based CPM; This shows the average gross revenue per 1000 playbacks where an AD or more is displayed.
  • Monthly Estimated Revenue; This report shows how much a YouTuber has earned from his/her channel in the last six months.
  • Revenue Sources: Just as the name suggests, this shows you the data of how much is earned from each revenue source used on your YouTube channel.
  • Transaction Revenue; The transaction revenue metric is a breakdown of how much a creator has earned from membership and merch.
  • Top Earnings; It shows the data of the video with the highest estimated revenue.
  • Ad Type; This displays the percentage of revenue earned from the different types of ads.

Part 2: How your YouTube earnings are calculated

Having known how to check YouTube income, if you’re still wondering how your earnings are calculated, here, we’ve discussed all the necessary information you need to know about how YouTube earnings are calculated.

YouTube earnings are calculated based on different factors. From CPC to CPM, estimated gross earnings per view, and more. Keep reading to find out more about how these factors affect your YouTube earnings;

CPM (Cost Per Mile): CPM is the amount an advertiser pays for every one thousand views of their ads. This means if an advertiser is paying you $10CPM, you’ll earn $10 on every 1000 views of their ads.

CPC (Cost Per Click): Most people think CPC is the same as CPM, but no they are not. Cost Per Click is the amount an advertiser pays for every viewer that clicks on their ads. If an advertiser is willing to pay $10, then you’ll earn $10 on every ad click.

Estimated Gross Earning Per Subscriber: You’ll notice whenever you watch a YouTube video, the creator always emphasizes you click the Subscribe button to get a notification on every new video he/she uploads. Well, they do this because the more subscribers they get, the more likely their videos appear in search results.

Also, if you have a huge Subscriber base, your videos tend to get more views, thereby increasing ad views, ad clicks, and your earnings.

All the factors explained above will determine how your YouTube earnings are calculated. However, keep in mind that you’ll receive only 55% of the total dollar advertisers pays while YouTube keeps the remaining 45%. If you get an average of $5 from an advertiser on every 1000 ad view, you’ll earn $5 x 55% which is approximately $2.75.

You can also calculate your YouTube channel total earnings by using the YouTube calculator .

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 6

Part 3: How do you increase your YouTube earnings?

1. Post quality videos

If your video is of low quality, then viewers might not find it interesting. For this reason, it’s important you post quality videos, and you need the Wondershare Filmora software for such an operation.

Filmora is one of the best video editing software that is trusted by millions of users globally because of its high efficiency. It supports lots of advanced tools that anyone can utilize to edit and spice up their videos. From adding transitions to applying effects, and more. It even offers a high-quality built-in preset that users can utilize for free to give their video the best quality they can ever think of.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

Step1 Install Filmora software on your computer.

Step2 Use the Import button to upload the video you created for your YouTube channel. You can also drag-n-drop it to the interface of the software.

import video filmora

Step3 Drag-n-drop the video you uploaded to the Timeline.

drag n drop video to timeline filmora

Step4 To remove unwanted background from your video, click Effects from the top side of the screen. Select AI Portrait from the left side of the screen and select a preferred AI Portrait effect that you’ll like to use in the video.

select ai portrait filmora

Step5 Next, drag-n-dop the chosen AI Portrait effect to the timeline. After that, adjust the AI Portrait effect from the timeline. You can also add multiple effects by dragging and dropping them to the timeline.

drag n drop ai portrait to timeline filmora

Step6 Double-click the AI Portrait effect from the Timeline. From the pop-up that appears, adjust the settings according to your requirements.

adjust ai portrait effect filmora

Step7 You can add Subscribe watermark by clicking the >> icon at the top of the screen, then select Element.

click element filmora

Choose the ‘Social Media Show Element 07’ Effects. Drag-n-drop the selected effect to the Timeline.

add subscribe watermark filmora

Step8 Preview the edited video. If you’re satisfied with the output, click the Export button at the top bar and choose Burn DVD from the drop-down list.

preview edited video filmora

Step9 Enter file name in the box next to Label. Then, navigate to Folder Path and choose where you want the file to be saved. Afterward, click Export to Finish.

export edited videos filmora

2. Upload videos regularly

Starting a YouTube channel can be quite hard from start, but make it a priority to upload at least two quality videos every week. Yes, the more quality videos you post, the more you attract the viewer to like your videos, and the higher your chances of getting new subscribers, thereby increasing your YouTube earnings.

3. Promote your Videos

Promoting your YouTube videos is a great way to increase your YouTube earnings. Once you post a new video on YouTube, you can share it to your other social media profiles or websites to increase views and attract new folks to watch the video. The more views you get the more money you’ll make.

Part 4: Hot FAQs on YouTube channel earnings check

Let’s take a look at some frequently asked questions from users like you.

1. Is monetizing on YouTube different from Google AdSense?

YouTube monetization involves making money from videos you upload on your YouTube channel. And Google AdSense is a means of monetizing your YouTube channel.

2. Why should you consider monetizing on YouTube creator?

Monetizing YouTube as a creator is a great way to earn passive income just by uploading videos. Research shows that an average YouTuber has the potential of earning $10,000 in revenue per year.

3. Which category is best for YouTube earnings?

The average CPM you earn from videos you upload on YouTube all depends on the niche of your video. The following are the best 5 categories best for YouTube earnings in 2022;

Make Money Online - $13.52

Social Media Marketing - $12.41

Finance & Investing - $12.25

Educational Videos - $9.89

Photography & Film Making - $7.31

Final Words

Checking YouTube income is not a big deal. This article has covered every necessary detail you need to know about checking your YouTube income on a PC or mobile phone. Also, if you don’t understand how YouTube earnings are calculated, we touched on that, and don’t hesitate to employ the tips discussed to increase your YouTube earnings.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

Part 1: Follow the steps below to check your YouTube earnings

The process of checking YouTube income is pretty straightforward. So, regardless of what device you’re using to check, we’ve briefly explained the step-by-step instructions to carry out your YouTube income check within a few clicks.

Check on a computer

To check YouTube income on your PC or Mac, you just have to do the following;

Step1 Open the browser app on your computer and sign in to your YouTube Studio .

Step2 Click Analytics from the left side of the screen.

how to check youtube income on pc 1

Step3 On the Analytics screen, select Revenue from the top side of the screen to check your YouTube income.

There, you’ll find your YouTube income and other necessary data that you might need.

Check on a Mobile Device

The process of checking YouTube income on an Android or iOS device is also straightforward, and you can use either the YouTube app or the YouTube Studio app to perform the operation. The steps below explain the procedure;

YouTube App

Step1 Make sure you have the latest version of the YouTube app on your phone. If not, you can install it from Google Play Store or App Store.

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 1

Step2 Log in to your YouTube account and tap on the Profile icon at the top side. Then, select Your Channel.

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 2

Step3 Tap the Analytics icon from the middle menu. Your YouTube channel income and other data will be displayed on your phone screen.

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 3

YouTube Studio App

Step1 Launch the YouTube Studio app on your Android or iPhone.

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 4

Step2 Tap Analytics from the bottom menu and select Revenue from the top of the screen.

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 5

The information that you’ll find in the YouTube revenue analytics includes the following;

  • RPM (Revenue Per Mile); This is the metric that displays how much a creator has earned per 1000 video views.
  • Playback-based CPM; This shows the average gross revenue per 1000 playbacks where an AD or more is displayed.
  • Monthly Estimated Revenue; This report shows how much a YouTuber has earned from his/her channel in the last six months.
  • Revenue Sources: Just as the name suggests, this shows you the data of how much is earned from each revenue source used on your YouTube channel.
  • Transaction Revenue; The transaction revenue metric is a breakdown of how much a creator has earned from membership and merch.
  • Top Earnings; It shows the data of the video with the highest estimated revenue.
  • Ad Type; This displays the percentage of revenue earned from the different types of ads.

Part 2: How your YouTube earnings are calculated

Having known how to check YouTube income, if you’re still wondering how your earnings are calculated, here, we’ve discussed all the necessary information you need to know about how YouTube earnings are calculated.

YouTube earnings are calculated based on different factors. From CPC to CPM, estimated gross earnings per view, and more. Keep reading to find out more about how these factors affect your YouTube earnings;

CPM (Cost Per Mile): CPM is the amount an advertiser pays for every one thousand views of their ads. This means if an advertiser is paying you $10CPM, you’ll earn $10 on every 1000 views of their ads.

CPC (Cost Per Click): Most people think CPC is the same as CPM, but no they are not. Cost Per Click is the amount an advertiser pays for every viewer that clicks on their ads. If an advertiser is willing to pay $10, then you’ll earn $10 on every ad click.

Estimated Gross Earning Per Subscriber: You’ll notice whenever you watch a YouTube video, the creator always emphasizes you click the Subscribe button to get a notification on every new video he/she uploads. Well, they do this because the more subscribers they get, the more likely their videos appear in search results.

Also, if you have a huge Subscriber base, your videos tend to get more views, thereby increasing ad views, ad clicks, and your earnings.

All the factors explained above will determine how your YouTube earnings are calculated. However, keep in mind that you’ll receive only 55% of the total dollar advertisers pays while YouTube keeps the remaining 45%. If you get an average of $5 from an advertiser on every 1000 ad view, you’ll earn $5 x 55% which is approximately $2.75.

You can also calculate your YouTube channel total earnings by using the YouTube calculator .

how to check youtube income on mobile phone 6

Part 3: How do you increase your YouTube earnings?

1. Post quality videos

If your video is of low quality, then viewers might not find it interesting. For this reason, it’s important you post quality videos, and you need the Wondershare Filmora software for such an operation.

Filmora is one of the best video editing software that is trusted by millions of users globally because of its high efficiency. It supports lots of advanced tools that anyone can utilize to edit and spice up their videos. From adding transitions to applying effects, and more. It even offers a high-quality built-in preset that users can utilize for free to give their video the best quality they can ever think of.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

Step1 Install Filmora software on your computer.

Step2 Use the Import button to upload the video you created for your YouTube channel. You can also drag-n-drop it to the interface of the software.

import video filmora

Step3 Drag-n-drop the video you uploaded to the Timeline.

drag n drop video to timeline filmora

Step4 To remove unwanted background from your video, click Effects from the top side of the screen. Select AI Portrait from the left side of the screen and select a preferred AI Portrait effect that you’ll like to use in the video.

select ai portrait filmora

Step5 Next, drag-n-dop the chosen AI Portrait effect to the timeline. After that, adjust the AI Portrait effect from the timeline. You can also add multiple effects by dragging and dropping them to the timeline.

drag n drop ai portrait to timeline filmora

Step6 Double-click the AI Portrait effect from the Timeline. From the pop-up that appears, adjust the settings according to your requirements.

adjust ai portrait effect filmora

Step7 You can add Subscribe watermark by clicking the >> icon at the top of the screen, then select Element.

click element filmora

Choose the ‘Social Media Show Element 07’ Effects. Drag-n-drop the selected effect to the Timeline.

add subscribe watermark filmora

Step8 Preview the edited video. If you’re satisfied with the output, click the Export button at the top bar and choose Burn DVD from the drop-down list.

preview edited video filmora

Step9 Enter file name in the box next to Label. Then, navigate to Folder Path and choose where you want the file to be saved. Afterward, click Export to Finish.

export edited videos filmora

2. Upload videos regularly

Starting a YouTube channel can be quite hard from start, but make it a priority to upload at least two quality videos every week. Yes, the more quality videos you post, the more you attract the viewer to like your videos, and the higher your chances of getting new subscribers, thereby increasing your YouTube earnings.

3. Promote your Videos

Promoting your YouTube videos is a great way to increase your YouTube earnings. Once you post a new video on YouTube, you can share it to your other social media profiles or websites to increase views and attract new folks to watch the video. The more views you get the more money you’ll make.

Part 4: Hot FAQs on YouTube channel earnings check

Let’s take a look at some frequently asked questions from users like you.

1. Is monetizing on YouTube different from Google AdSense?

YouTube monetization involves making money from videos you upload on your YouTube channel. And Google AdSense is a means of monetizing your YouTube channel.

2. Why should you consider monetizing on YouTube creator?

Monetizing YouTube as a creator is a great way to earn passive income just by uploading videos. Research shows that an average YouTuber has the potential of earning $10,000 in revenue per year.

3. Which category is best for YouTube earnings?

The average CPM you earn from videos you upload on YouTube all depends on the niche of your video. The following are the best 5 categories best for YouTube earnings in 2022;

Make Money Online - $13.52

Social Media Marketing - $12.41

Finance & Investing - $12.25

Educational Videos - $9.89

Photography & Film Making - $7.31

Final Words

Checking YouTube income is not a big deal. This article has covered every necessary detail you need to know about checking your YouTube income on a PC or mobile phone. Also, if you don’t understand how YouTube earnings are calculated, we touched on that, and don’t hesitate to employ the tips discussed to increase your YouTube earnings.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

Drive Traffic and Growth with YouTube Analytic Insights

How to Use YouTube Analytics to Grow Your Channel?

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

As a YouTuber, you know those famous metrics: Views, Subscribers, and Watch Time. Those YouTube analytics are easy to understand. But YouTube offers much more data.

YouTube data is valuable because it can show you why you aren’t getting more subscribers and why certain videos aren’t getting the views you expected. Data can also identify all the positive results and give you insights into what worked.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to use YouTube Analytics to gain knowledge, take action, and grow your channel.

YouTube Analytics:

  1. Overview
  2. Realtime
  3. Revenue
  4. Ad Rates
  5. Watch Time
  6. Audience Retention
  7. Demographics
  8. Playback Locations
  9. Traffic Sources
  10. Devices
  11. Translations
  12. Subscribers
  13. Likes and Dislikes
  14. Videos in Playlists
  15. Comments
  16. Sharing
  17. Annotations
  18. Cards
  19. End Screens

When you enter your YouTube Creator Studio, you will find the Analytics Tab on the left-hand-side menu. Click into it and you will see a whole list of features, each linking to its own dashboard.

youtube-creator-sutdio

But with all this information, it can get a little overwhelming for new YouTubers. Don’t sweat. Let’s walk through each section to identify:

- What information it is displaying

- What issues it addresses

- What you can do to improve the results

1. Overview

Use Overview Report for Quick Analysis

The Overview report is the first page you land on when you click into Analytics, and it’s what you want to see when you are checking in.

The Overview dashboard breaks down all your key stats. If you want a deeper dive, you can click into each of the section headers and it will give you an in-depth look at the analytics of that specific category.

youtube-creator-studio-overview

Personalize Your Overview

By default, the dashboard will show you the stats from the last 28 days, but you can personalize the time frame to see the data of that specific period.

data-of-specific-period

If you only want to focus on the performance of your channel on a specific region, you can customize that as well:

data-of-specific-region

Note: You will be able to change the time frame and region for all the data within YouTube Analytics.

See Your Top Performing Videos In Overview

The Overview dashboard highlights your Top 10 videos. Right away you can see the Watch Time, Views, and Estimated Revenue of those high performing videos.

top-performing-videos-in-overview

Get Insights On Your Audience In Overview

In Overview you can see where the majority of your audience is from, what gender they are, how they are discovering your videos in Traffic Source, and where they are watching your video in Playback Locations:

your-audience-in-overview

How to Use the Overview Dashboard

The Overview dashboard is your mission control. I recommend popping in weekly to get a top view of your channel’s performance.

If you notice anything unusual or surprising, such as a spike in Shares, you can then dig into the individual data and identify the cause.

2. Realtime

See The Performance of Your Channel

The Realtime report is a fantastic tool for seeing the immediate performance of your channel, which automatically updates every 10 seconds. There are two main views: The last 48 hours and the Last 60 Minutes.

performance-of-your-channel

See Performance of Your 25 Most Recently Published Videos

In the Realtime dashboard, you will see the last 48 hours and last 60-minute performance of your 25 most recently published videos.

If you have recently shared a new video, you should log into the Realtime dashboard to get a quick glance at the performance.

most-recently-published-videos

See How and Where Your Videos Are Being Viewed At the Moment

If you want to find out how many people have viewed your videos from a mobile device or how big your audience currently is, you can do that in the Realtime report.

- Select Device to see if you have more viewers on Desktop, Mobile, or Tablet.

- Select Operating System to find out if you have more Android viewers or iOS viewers in the past two days.

- Select Geography to see which region you are getting the most views and when viewerships are dropping because most likely people in that area are sleeping.

If you notice that you are getting a lot of views from the US, but also notice that people are about to go to sleep and the trend shows that it drops at that point in the past 24 hours, you can decide whether to schedule the post for the next morning or you can see if a boost at this point can keep the audience awake.

real-time-data

How to Use the Realtime Dashboard

If YouTube sees that your recently published video is performing well right off the bat, then it will give your video a better chance of trending, ranking higher in search, and reaching more viewers.

Getting early insights on a recently published video may help you adjust your promotion strategy as needed.

For example, if you published a video this morning and shared it on your Facebook page, and you checked in this morning and saw that there was only a small amount of views, you may want to share it on a different platform so that it can get more exposure.

3. Revenue

See How Much Money Your Channel Has Made

Select a specific timeline and see how much your channel has made from ads and YouTube Red viewers during that duration.

There are 3 ways to change the timeline:

  1. Dropdown menu

revenue-drop-down-menu

  1. Calendar

revenue-calendar

  1. Slide Bar

slide-bar-line-chart

You can also change how you view your data, whether Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc. This way you can see exactly how much you made each day, week, or month, and determine if you can correlate a particular dip or spike to an event that occurred.

slide-bar-daily-view

Identify Your Highest Earning Videos

In the Revenue report, you can see which videos are earning you the most. Consider how these videos are successful:

- Was the content great?

- Was it the perfect length?

- Was it a well-structured video?

- Was the video’s pacing fast?

Once you’ve done a full evaluation, see if you can apply it to your other videos.

highest-earning-videos

Which Country Is Earning You the Most Money

Different countries have different rates for how much creators can make off Adsense. Click into Geography and see how much you are making in different countries and consider which audience is best to focus your attention on with the intention of increasing revenue.

Compare Estimated Revenue Earning to Other Metrics

Know more about how your data are related by comparing to see if Revenue is affected by the performance of metrics in other categories such as Views. Does a rise in view change your revenue?

revenue-earning-to-other-metrics

How to Use the Revenue Dashboard

Figuring how to make money on YouTube is tricky and any insight you can get can give you an advantage, steer you in the right direction, and help you focus on what matters.

As you can see in the example in the graph from the section above, the View count has been fairly consistent, however, the Revenue is sporadic.

This tells you that while Views may be an important metric, it won’t affect your revenue. This can mean that you haven’t been reaching the audience that will engage with the ads, consider a slight content shift.

4. Ad Rates

Understanding the Ad Rates Report

the-ad-rates-report

YouTube Ad Revenue: This is the estimated gross total of all the money you made from ads sold via Google and Google partners.

Estimated Monetized Playbacks: This is the number of times your audience is shown an ad.

Playback-based CPM: This is an estimation from YouTube on how much money you can make if you had 1,000 views from a monetized video. This is based on the parameters of the advertisers, your current number of views, and where your viewers are from.

CPM: This is the estimated amount you will earn for 1,000 ad impressions.

See Which Monetized Videos Are Earning Your Ad Revenue

Unlike the Revenue dashboard, the Ad Rates report dives deeper into the performance of individual monetized videos.

This allows you to not only see the estimated earnings but also how many times the ad was shown. On top of that, the CPM gives you an idea of what YouTube deems to be more valuable content for advertisers, which gives you a better idea about the capabilities of the video and offers insight into the type of videos you make in the future.

monetized-videos

See How Each Ad Type Is Performing Within Individual Video

Click into Ad Type and you will be able to see the performance of different types of Ads (skippable video ads, display ads, bumper ads, and non-skippable video ads.)

You can see these details from the channel level or from an individual video level.

ad-type-within-individual-video

How to Use Ad Rates Report

Ad performance might not be something you think about at the early stages. You want to make videos, and not worry too much about ads, after all.

But as you accumulate more and more monetized videos, and you will start seeing which videos are stronger in getting you ad engagements and which aren’t. The result might surprise you and help inform your next phase of videos.

5. Watch Time

See The Aggregated Time Your Viewers Spent Watching Your Videos

YouTube puts a lot of weight on this metric because they know that the more time people spend watching your original content, the more time they will have to show ads to your audience. Overall, you’ll want to see a steady rise for your Watch Time as it will indicate that you have a growing dedicated viewership.

the-aggregated-time

In the graph, you will also be able to see the combined Views of all your videos, as well as the segmented performance of YouTube Red viewers.

YouTube Red is YouTube’s subscription plan. It is currently only available in Australia, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, and the United States.

YouTube Red offers ad-free content that can be enjoyed offline. Since the viewers with YouTube Red won’t see ads, YouTube will give you partial revenue from Red viewers.

Compare Performance of Videos in the Graph

Put your videos side by side to compare the performance over the course of a time period.

performance-of-videos-in-the-graph

How to Use Watch Time Report

If you want to be in YouTube’s algorithm’s good books, then you will need to put some attention on your channel’s Watch Time. Always consider ways in which you can improve this metric.

Some strategies include:

- Add videos to optimized playlists

- Improving titles and thumbnails

- Increase YouTube subscribers

- Add annotations to your videos

- Add end cards to your videos

6. Audience Retention

See How Long Your Viewers Spend Watching Your Videos

Like Watch Time, Audience Retention is a metric YouTube uses to determine how valuable your video is and how worthy it is in being discovered by your audience. It’s important to learn where in your video you are losing viewers.

In Audience Retention, there are two main categories you can see.

  1. Average View Duration shows how much time all your viewers from a certain time frame spend watching your video.
  2. Average Percentage Viewed shows how much the average person watched from your videos.

In this example, we see that the average length of a video watched is 1:14 and the average viewer will watch 53% of the video.

While you should aim to have 100% audience retention, if you can get an average above 50%, you are doing something right. Anything under, you may want to consider changing up your strategy (content, structure, pacing, etc.).

average-view-duration

See Audience Retention of Individual Videos

Absolute Audience Retention: This report shows you the number of views at every point in the video as a percentage. This will let you know which part of the video is most popular, which part is causing a big drop off, and which part viewers are skipping to or rewatching.

absolute-audience-retention

Relative Audience Retention: This report gives you a visualization of how your video’s audience retention performance compares to all YouTube videos of a similar length.

If the line indicates that you are above average at a certain point, that is where your video is doing a better job holding the viewer’s attention at that point compared to most other videos.

relative-audience-retention

How to Use Audience Retention

Audience retention can give you a lot of insights on how you should be structuring your videos. If you notice a steep drop in viewership, you can assume that what the viewer is watching is not that interesting.

However, if you notice a sudden peak in the middle of your video, you can assume that a) viewers are skipping to it or b) viewers are rewatching that section.

In the example below, we see that there is a peak at the point in this video where a specific part of a tutorial is shown. Viewers were most likely rewatching to confirm they understand the information, so they can apply it themselves.

how-to-use-audience-retention

Knowing this, for the next video you make, you can better anticipate where your viewers are going to need more time on a specific part or whether you should skip ahead to something more interesting.

7. Demographics

Understand the Average Age and Gender of Your Audience

The first thing you’ll see when you enter the Demographic dashboard is the segmentation of your audience by age and gender. This gives you a good indication of who your overall channel is currently attracting.

demographics

Learn about the videos that are most popular within that demographic to get better insights to what is most appealing for that group.

You will also see the Watch Time percentage that each video gets in comparison with all the videos in your channel.

Data Split by Age:

data-split-by-age

Data Split by Gender:

data-split-by-gender

See Geographic Distribution of Different Demographics

Not only will you be able to see which region the majority of your viewerships are from, but you can also segment and compare by demographics. This will give you a more insightful view of how your channel is performing across the world for different people.

geographic-distribution

Additionally, you can click into specific videos on your channel and see how it is performing in different regions.

How to Use Demographics Report

Understanding which group makes up the majority of your viewership will help you decide how to strategize the next phase of content. Will you keep growing that audience or will you want to grow in another demographic?

If you noticed that you have an underperforming female demographic in India, you can plan out some content that focus on that community. Without this report, you cannot see where you are missing opportunities.

8. Playback Locations

Find Out Where People Are Watching Your Videos

There are a number of ways people can watch your YouTube video:

- YouTube Watch Page

- YouTube Channel Page

- Embedded Video Player (Website or App)

- Other

If your video is only promoted organically your views will likely be coming from the YouTube Watch Page, but if other media publications embedded your video, and it’s getting a lot of views, you can see it here.

playback-locations

Which External Source Are Your Videos Being Watched

By clicking into the Embedded in External Websites and Apps report, you’ll be able to see all the different websites and apps that your video is featured on. This will give you a good indication of which sites and apps are driving the most views.

external-source

How to Use Playback Locations Report

Knowing where your videos are being played back is important, especially if you are getting a lot of views from an external source.

You can reach out to the website that has embedded your video and thank them for sharing your content, and maybe they will be happy to share more. This way you create a relationship with them, which can increase your network and also improve the chances of your videos being discovered.

9. Traffic Sources

Find Out How People Are Discovering Your Videos

In the Traffic Sources report, you can see what is the most popular way your video is being discovered.

This can include advertisements that you pay for, external referrals such as links from other websites, suggested videos, and searches on YouTube to name a few.

traffic-sources

See Which Videos Are Suggesting Yours To Viewers

If you see that you are getting a lot of viewers coming from Suggested Videos, go to that report and see which external video was directing viewers to yours. These suggested videos can be your own or it can be from another YouTube creator.

video-suggesting-yours

See What People Search For To Discover Your Video

By clicking into the YouTube search, you can see what viewers searched in order to find your video. This can be useful in understanding your viewers’ mindset: were they trying to solve a problem or answer a question?

Knowing this, you can improve your keyword research.

what-people-search-for

How to Use Traffic Sources Report

Because there are so many ways for a viewer to discover your videos, it’s important for you to know what is most effective.

If you have a new video coming out and you want to promote it, understanding where your previous videos are being discovered will help you strategize, giving it the best opportunity immediately.

10. Devices

Know What Devices Your Viewers Are Watching From

what-devices-your-viewers-are-watching-from

The way viewers watch content on their mobile phones is very different from the way they watch on television. By understanding how the majority of your viewers are watching your content, you can better design and structure your video.

For example, if you see that you have a large following that watches your content on mobile, then it might not be a good idea to load your video with too much text, as it’ll be hard for them to read.

You cannot control how people watch your content, but by better understanding their preferences, you can design your content to make it the best for their ideal situation.

11. Translations

See If You Need to Include Multi-Languages or Translation to Your Videos

The Translations report is where you can see how your viewers are watching your videos in terms of using translations and subtitles.

If you are creating content that targets international viewers, it’s good to know if they are engaging with your translation assets, including subtitles.

For example, if you see an increase in viewers from Brazil, do a quick translation of your transcript and upload the Portuguese subtitles and see if it increases viewers.

12. Subscribers

Find Out Where People Clicked Subscribe

In the Subscribers report, you can see where most of your subscribers came from and where people unsubscribe.

where-people-clicked-subscribe

If you see that you are getting a lot of conversions from the YouTube Watch Page, you can dig in and see which video specifically you should give credit to for earning your subscribers — and which ones are causing people to unsubscribe.

analyzing-conversion

Find Out Which YouTube Keywords Are Leading to Subscriptions

Click into YouTube search to see the most popular search terms that have lead to people subscribing to your channel.

keywords-leading-to-subscription

See Which Date You Got The Most Subscribers

Click into Date and find out if there was something significant that happened that day that made people subscribe to your channel more than others?

date-you-got-the-most-subscribers

How to Use the Subscriber Report

Understanding which video drives viewers to become subscribers and which videos turn people off so that they unsubscribe will tell you a lot about the content you should be creating.

If you see a video is earning you a lot of subscribers, it might be a good idea to give it a boost and make sure more people discover it. However, if you see a video is causing people to click unsubscribe, even though it might be a video you love, consider removing it from your channel as it might be doing more harm than good for your channel growth.

13. Likes and Dislikes

See the Likes and Dislikes of Individual Videos

In addition to seeing the total Likes and Dislikes your channel received, in this report, you can see the Likes and Dislikes of individual videos. This gives you a quick glance at how your viewers are enjoying your channel and videos.

likes-and-dislikes

Compare Likes and Dislikes with Other Metrics

See if there is a correlation between the channel’s performance and how viewers give Likes and Dislikes. Does increasing views get you more likes? Did a dip in views cause people to stop liking your videos?

Getting more of these data will help you plan new tactics to increase engagements.

likes-and-dislikes-with-other-metrics

See Which Date You Got the Most Likes and Dislikes

Identify the days you got a lot of Likes or Dislikes, and ask, was there something particular that happened that led to the high numbers?

date-you-got-the-most-likes-and-dislikes

Compare Subscriber vs Non-Subscriber Likes and Dislikes

Knowing how your subscribers and non-subscribers are responding to your content will give you a good idea at how effective your video is at delighting those that know your content well, and those that are newer to your videos.

likes-and-dislikes-between-subscribers-and-non-subscribers

How to Use the Likes and Dislikes Report

As a creator, you always want to know how your videos are received. Knowing how your audience feels about your content, even if it’s just a Like or Dislike click, is a good indication of whether the public found your work: educational, inspirational, or entertaining.

14. Videos in Playlists

Find Out How Many Videos Are In Playlists

When a video is added to a playlist, it means someone thought it was relevant or they enjoyed it so much they added it to their Favorite list.

Having videos added to playlists is a good thing because it increases the chances of being discovered as people looking for a bunch of content within a category can watch it all linearly.

videos-in-playlists

See Which Video Is In The Most Playlists

By having a report to see which videos have been added to the playlist, you can see that there is an interest in this type of content. With this knowledge, you can decide that perhaps the audience may be interested in a series around this topic.

video-in-the-most-playlists

See If There Is a Correlation Between Videos in Playlists and Watch Time

Identify if there are any direct or indirect effects of having videos in the playlist by comparing it to important metrics such as Watch Time. If you see that there is a boost for days when more videos are added to the playlist, you can start planning more strategies to get video features along with other related content.

correalation-between-videos-in-playlist-and-watch-time

How to Use Videos in Playlist

The Videos in the Playlist report give you another perspective on the popularity of videos. Unlike Views or Watch Time, adding a video to a playlist means that the audience will likely watch it again, as they are saving it amongst related content or as a favorite video.

15. Comments

See How Many People Have Commented On Channel Or Specific Videos

Select a time period and see how many comments your channel and videos got at that point. Knowing which video gets you the most comments and when it happens, gives you a good idea what type of conversations your audience is interested in having.

the-number-of-commented-people

Compare Different Videos and Time Period to See How Your Videos Are Engaging Audience

Evaluate how your videos are performing by comparing them, and identifying what makes a more engaging video for your audience.

how-your-videos-are-engaging-audience

How to Use Comments Report

If there is a video that triggered a debate within your community or if a video led to a lot of questions, this may inspire you to create more content around that topic.

However, there are also benefits of using an external analytics tool like Sotrender . You can adjust the amount of time you want to analyze, visualize the metrics in different ways, and even customize what you want to show in the graphs. What’s more, Sotrender has it’s own metric called the Activity Index, which indicates to what extent your audience is engaging with your videos. You can use this metric in combination with others to see what content your audience is really invested in.

how-to-use-comments-report

16. Sharing

See How Many Times Your Videos Have Been Shared

This report shows you how frequently your audience is sharing your videos to their networks. In addition to Views and Watch Time, knowing the shareability of your content helps guide your videos in achieving viral status.

how-many-times-your-videos-have-been-shared

Know which platform your audience is most active on. Understanding this can help you tailor your content to be more shareable on those channels or you can discover your audience’s account on those services and thank them personality.

most-popular-service-for-your-channel

See How Frequently a Video is Getting Shared

Understand how your videos are getting shared by your viewers. Do you see a spike in shares the first few days after publishing and then it becomes forgotten or is it an evergreen video that keeps getting consistent shares through its lifetime?

the-frequecy-of-a-video-getting-shared-one

Compare Sharing to Views

By comparing Shares to other metrics such as Views and Watch Time, you can see if there is a correlation to performance and the amount the video is shared.

compare-sharing-to-views

How to Use Sharing Report

Understand what videos you create are more likely to get shares. If you are making a lot of how-to videos, a lot of people might be searching for the content, but unless it is highly relevant, it won’t get shared. The type of content that gets shared are the ones that have an interesting story and delights people.

If you find that a lot of people are sharing your content on a specific service, you may consider that as the platform to best expand your channel on.

17. Annotations

Find Out How Many Annotations Were Click Within a Period

When you add annotations to your videos, you would want to know if your audience is actually engaging with it. This report gives you an overview of how frequently your viewers are clicking on the links.

This report also shows you how often viewers choose to close your Annotation completely, giving you an indication that they have no interest in the link.

annotations-clicked-within-a-period

Compare Performance of Different Annotations

This report allows you to see which type of annotations are performing the best for your audience.

compare-performance-of-different-annotations

See Annotation Performance of a Specific Video

Click into a specific video to see which type of annotations are getting engagement and at what time it is happening. If you see that many annotation clicks are happening at a certain point in your video, going forward with your new videos that is where you can insert it.

annotation-performance-of-a-specific-video

How to Use Annotations

By finding out when in the video your audience engages with annotations and what type of annotations performs the best, you will have more insights on designing your videos and where to position the annotations to get the optimal results.

18. Cards

See Which Card Teasers and Cards Are Getting Clicked

Find out which videos are driving the most Card clicks and which type of Cards your audience is most interested in.

card-teasers-get-clicked

Are viewers more interested in watching more videos or are they wanting to read a post from your blog (associated website)? This report is where you can find out by clicking into Card Type.

card-type

See what is happening on screen that is making the card more click-worthy, this can help you plan out your next video so that you direct your viewers’ attention to the clickable card teaser so they see it.

on-screen-contentclick-worthy-link

How to Use Cards Report

This report helps you understand the different cards and how they are performing within your videos so that you can better plan your content to increase the chances of your audience engaging with your cards.

19. End Screens

See How Often The End Screen Is Shown And Clicked

By seeing how many times the End Screen is shown, you can have an idea of how often viewers reach the end of your videos.

Then it’s good to see what percentage of them actually click to engage with your channel and content more.

end-screen-get-clicked

See Performance of Each End Screen Elements

In this report, you can see which End Screen Element is driving the most clicks and better understand the viewer’s motivation at the end of your videos.

performance-of-each-end-screen-elements

Because you can have multiple elements in the End Screen, you would want to see which one is performing the best.

most-popular-screen-elements-within-the-same-video

See Which Videos YouTube Chooses As Best For Viewers

In this report, you can also see the performance of different End Screen Element Types.

videos-that-youtube-chooses-as-best

One of these elements is the Best for Viewer, which allows YouTube to determine which of your video is best to present to the viewer in relation to their browsing history and interests.

By clicking into the Best for Viewer section you can see the top-performing videos that YouTube suggested to your viewers. Does it align with what you think is your best video?

top-performing-videos-that-youtube-suggest

How to Use The End Screens Report

The End Screens report is great for letting you know which of your existing content the audience is interested in seeing after they finished watching one of your videos. As you learn more about your viewers and accumulate more videos, with the help of the End Screens report, you can determine which videos to use to increase Views and Watch Time.

Conclusion

Television producers pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to data companies to get the same set of analytics that YouTube offers its creators for free.

Learning how to use analytics is not always a skill YouTubers think about when they are making videos, but it plays such an instrumental part throughout the whole stage of creation, from ideation to distribution.

Understanding how your videos are performing shines a light on your process, helps you evaluate what is working and what isn’t, and empower you to think beyond the lens and create videos that really resonates with your growing audience.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Filmora, which is equipped with its own footage stock Wondershare Filmstock and will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

Download Filmora9 Win Version Download Filmora9 Mac Version

author avatar

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

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As a YouTuber, you know those famous metrics: Views, Subscribers, and Watch Time. Those YouTube analytics are easy to understand. But YouTube offers much more data.

YouTube data is valuable because it can show you why you aren’t getting more subscribers and why certain videos aren’t getting the views you expected. Data can also identify all the positive results and give you insights into what worked.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to use YouTube Analytics to gain knowledge, take action, and grow your channel.

YouTube Analytics:

  1. Overview
  2. Realtime
  3. Revenue
  4. Ad Rates
  5. Watch Time
  6. Audience Retention
  7. Demographics
  8. Playback Locations
  9. Traffic Sources
  10. Devices
  11. Translations
  12. Subscribers
  13. Likes and Dislikes
  14. Videos in Playlists
  15. Comments
  16. Sharing
  17. Annotations
  18. Cards
  19. End Screens

When you enter your YouTube Creator Studio, you will find the Analytics Tab on the left-hand-side menu. Click into it and you will see a whole list of features, each linking to its own dashboard.

youtube-creator-sutdio

But with all this information, it can get a little overwhelming for new YouTubers. Don’t sweat. Let’s walk through each section to identify:

- What information it is displaying

- What issues it addresses

- What you can do to improve the results

1. Overview

Use Overview Report for Quick Analysis

The Overview report is the first page you land on when you click into Analytics, and it’s what you want to see when you are checking in.

The Overview dashboard breaks down all your key stats. If you want a deeper dive, you can click into each of the section headers and it will give you an in-depth look at the analytics of that specific category.

youtube-creator-studio-overview

Personalize Your Overview

By default, the dashboard will show you the stats from the last 28 days, but you can personalize the time frame to see the data of that specific period.

data-of-specific-period

If you only want to focus on the performance of your channel on a specific region, you can customize that as well:

data-of-specific-region

Note: You will be able to change the time frame and region for all the data within YouTube Analytics.

See Your Top Performing Videos In Overview

The Overview dashboard highlights your Top 10 videos. Right away you can see the Watch Time, Views, and Estimated Revenue of those high performing videos.

top-performing-videos-in-overview

Get Insights On Your Audience In Overview

In Overview you can see where the majority of your audience is from, what gender they are, how they are discovering your videos in Traffic Source, and where they are watching your video in Playback Locations:

your-audience-in-overview

How to Use the Overview Dashboard

The Overview dashboard is your mission control. I recommend popping in weekly to get a top view of your channel’s performance.

If you notice anything unusual or surprising, such as a spike in Shares, you can then dig into the individual data and identify the cause.

2. Realtime

See The Performance of Your Channel

The Realtime report is a fantastic tool for seeing the immediate performance of your channel, which automatically updates every 10 seconds. There are two main views: The last 48 hours and the Last 60 Minutes.

performance-of-your-channel

See Performance of Your 25 Most Recently Published Videos

In the Realtime dashboard, you will see the last 48 hours and last 60-minute performance of your 25 most recently published videos.

If you have recently shared a new video, you should log into the Realtime dashboard to get a quick glance at the performance.

most-recently-published-videos

See How and Where Your Videos Are Being Viewed At the Moment

If you want to find out how many people have viewed your videos from a mobile device or how big your audience currently is, you can do that in the Realtime report.

- Select Device to see if you have more viewers on Desktop, Mobile, or Tablet.

- Select Operating System to find out if you have more Android viewers or iOS viewers in the past two days.

- Select Geography to see which region you are getting the most views and when viewerships are dropping because most likely people in that area are sleeping.

If you notice that you are getting a lot of views from the US, but also notice that people are about to go to sleep and the trend shows that it drops at that point in the past 24 hours, you can decide whether to schedule the post for the next morning or you can see if a boost at this point can keep the audience awake.

real-time-data

How to Use the Realtime Dashboard

If YouTube sees that your recently published video is performing well right off the bat, then it will give your video a better chance of trending, ranking higher in search, and reaching more viewers.

Getting early insights on a recently published video may help you adjust your promotion strategy as needed.

For example, if you published a video this morning and shared it on your Facebook page, and you checked in this morning and saw that there was only a small amount of views, you may want to share it on a different platform so that it can get more exposure.

3. Revenue

See How Much Money Your Channel Has Made

Select a specific timeline and see how much your channel has made from ads and YouTube Red viewers during that duration.

There are 3 ways to change the timeline:

  1. Dropdown menu

revenue-drop-down-menu

  1. Calendar

revenue-calendar

  1. Slide Bar

slide-bar-line-chart

You can also change how you view your data, whether Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc. This way you can see exactly how much you made each day, week, or month, and determine if you can correlate a particular dip or spike to an event that occurred.

slide-bar-daily-view

Identify Your Highest Earning Videos

In the Revenue report, you can see which videos are earning you the most. Consider how these videos are successful:

- Was the content great?

- Was it the perfect length?

- Was it a well-structured video?

- Was the video’s pacing fast?

Once you’ve done a full evaluation, see if you can apply it to your other videos.

highest-earning-videos

Which Country Is Earning You the Most Money

Different countries have different rates for how much creators can make off Adsense. Click into Geography and see how much you are making in different countries and consider which audience is best to focus your attention on with the intention of increasing revenue.

Compare Estimated Revenue Earning to Other Metrics

Know more about how your data are related by comparing to see if Revenue is affected by the performance of metrics in other categories such as Views. Does a rise in view change your revenue?

revenue-earning-to-other-metrics

How to Use the Revenue Dashboard

Figuring how to make money on YouTube is tricky and any insight you can get can give you an advantage, steer you in the right direction, and help you focus on what matters.

As you can see in the example in the graph from the section above, the View count has been fairly consistent, however, the Revenue is sporadic.

This tells you that while Views may be an important metric, it won’t affect your revenue. This can mean that you haven’t been reaching the audience that will engage with the ads, consider a slight content shift.

4. Ad Rates

Understanding the Ad Rates Report

the-ad-rates-report

YouTube Ad Revenue: This is the estimated gross total of all the money you made from ads sold via Google and Google partners.

Estimated Monetized Playbacks: This is the number of times your audience is shown an ad.

Playback-based CPM: This is an estimation from YouTube on how much money you can make if you had 1,000 views from a monetized video. This is based on the parameters of the advertisers, your current number of views, and where your viewers are from.

CPM: This is the estimated amount you will earn for 1,000 ad impressions.

See Which Monetized Videos Are Earning Your Ad Revenue

Unlike the Revenue dashboard, the Ad Rates report dives deeper into the performance of individual monetized videos.

This allows you to not only see the estimated earnings but also how many times the ad was shown. On top of that, the CPM gives you an idea of what YouTube deems to be more valuable content for advertisers, which gives you a better idea about the capabilities of the video and offers insight into the type of videos you make in the future.

monetized-videos

See How Each Ad Type Is Performing Within Individual Video

Click into Ad Type and you will be able to see the performance of different types of Ads (skippable video ads, display ads, bumper ads, and non-skippable video ads.)

You can see these details from the channel level or from an individual video level.

ad-type-within-individual-video

How to Use Ad Rates Report

Ad performance might not be something you think about at the early stages. You want to make videos, and not worry too much about ads, after all.

But as you accumulate more and more monetized videos, and you will start seeing which videos are stronger in getting you ad engagements and which aren’t. The result might surprise you and help inform your next phase of videos.

5. Watch Time

See The Aggregated Time Your Viewers Spent Watching Your Videos

YouTube puts a lot of weight on this metric because they know that the more time people spend watching your original content, the more time they will have to show ads to your audience. Overall, you’ll want to see a steady rise for your Watch Time as it will indicate that you have a growing dedicated viewership.

the-aggregated-time

In the graph, you will also be able to see the combined Views of all your videos, as well as the segmented performance of YouTube Red viewers.

YouTube Red is YouTube’s subscription plan. It is currently only available in Australia, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, and the United States.

YouTube Red offers ad-free content that can be enjoyed offline. Since the viewers with YouTube Red won’t see ads, YouTube will give you partial revenue from Red viewers.

Compare Performance of Videos in the Graph

Put your videos side by side to compare the performance over the course of a time period.

performance-of-videos-in-the-graph

How to Use Watch Time Report

If you want to be in YouTube’s algorithm’s good books, then you will need to put some attention on your channel’s Watch Time. Always consider ways in which you can improve this metric.

Some strategies include:

- Add videos to optimized playlists

- Improving titles and thumbnails

- Increase YouTube subscribers

- Add annotations to your videos

- Add end cards to your videos

6. Audience Retention

See How Long Your Viewers Spend Watching Your Videos

Like Watch Time, Audience Retention is a metric YouTube uses to determine how valuable your video is and how worthy it is in being discovered by your audience. It’s important to learn where in your video you are losing viewers.

In Audience Retention, there are two main categories you can see.

  1. Average View Duration shows how much time all your viewers from a certain time frame spend watching your video.
  2. Average Percentage Viewed shows how much the average person watched from your videos.

In this example, we see that the average length of a video watched is 1:14 and the average viewer will watch 53% of the video.

While you should aim to have 100% audience retention, if you can get an average above 50%, you are doing something right. Anything under, you may want to consider changing up your strategy (content, structure, pacing, etc.).

average-view-duration

See Audience Retention of Individual Videos

Absolute Audience Retention: This report shows you the number of views at every point in the video as a percentage. This will let you know which part of the video is most popular, which part is causing a big drop off, and which part viewers are skipping to or rewatching.

absolute-audience-retention

Relative Audience Retention: This report gives you a visualization of how your video’s audience retention performance compares to all YouTube videos of a similar length.

If the line indicates that you are above average at a certain point, that is where your video is doing a better job holding the viewer’s attention at that point compared to most other videos.

relative-audience-retention

How to Use Audience Retention

Audience retention can give you a lot of insights on how you should be structuring your videos. If you notice a steep drop in viewership, you can assume that what the viewer is watching is not that interesting.

However, if you notice a sudden peak in the middle of your video, you can assume that a) viewers are skipping to it or b) viewers are rewatching that section.

In the example below, we see that there is a peak at the point in this video where a specific part of a tutorial is shown. Viewers were most likely rewatching to confirm they understand the information, so they can apply it themselves.

how-to-use-audience-retention

Knowing this, for the next video you make, you can better anticipate where your viewers are going to need more time on a specific part or whether you should skip ahead to something more interesting.

7. Demographics

Understand the Average Age and Gender of Your Audience

The first thing you’ll see when you enter the Demographic dashboard is the segmentation of your audience by age and gender. This gives you a good indication of who your overall channel is currently attracting.

demographics

Learn about the videos that are most popular within that demographic to get better insights to what is most appealing for that group.

You will also see the Watch Time percentage that each video gets in comparison with all the videos in your channel.

Data Split by Age:

data-split-by-age

Data Split by Gender:

data-split-by-gender

See Geographic Distribution of Different Demographics

Not only will you be able to see which region the majority of your viewerships are from, but you can also segment and compare by demographics. This will give you a more insightful view of how your channel is performing across the world for different people.

geographic-distribution

Additionally, you can click into specific videos on your channel and see how it is performing in different regions.

How to Use Demographics Report

Understanding which group makes up the majority of your viewership will help you decide how to strategize the next phase of content. Will you keep growing that audience or will you want to grow in another demographic?

If you noticed that you have an underperforming female demographic in India, you can plan out some content that focus on that community. Without this report, you cannot see where you are missing opportunities.

8. Playback Locations

Find Out Where People Are Watching Your Videos

There are a number of ways people can watch your YouTube video:

- YouTube Watch Page

- YouTube Channel Page

- Embedded Video Player (Website or App)

- Other

If your video is only promoted organically your views will likely be coming from the YouTube Watch Page, but if other media publications embedded your video, and it’s getting a lot of views, you can see it here.

playback-locations

Which External Source Are Your Videos Being Watched

By clicking into the Embedded in External Websites and Apps report, you’ll be able to see all the different websites and apps that your video is featured on. This will give you a good indication of which sites and apps are driving the most views.

external-source

How to Use Playback Locations Report

Knowing where your videos are being played back is important, especially if you are getting a lot of views from an external source.

You can reach out to the website that has embedded your video and thank them for sharing your content, and maybe they will be happy to share more. This way you create a relationship with them, which can increase your network and also improve the chances of your videos being discovered.

9. Traffic Sources

Find Out How People Are Discovering Your Videos

In the Traffic Sources report, you can see what is the most popular way your video is being discovered.

This can include advertisements that you pay for, external referrals such as links from other websites, suggested videos, and searches on YouTube to name a few.

traffic-sources

See Which Videos Are Suggesting Yours To Viewers

If you see that you are getting a lot of viewers coming from Suggested Videos, go to that report and see which external video was directing viewers to yours. These suggested videos can be your own or it can be from another YouTube creator.

video-suggesting-yours

See What People Search For To Discover Your Video

By clicking into the YouTube search, you can see what viewers searched in order to find your video. This can be useful in understanding your viewers’ mindset: were they trying to solve a problem or answer a question?

Knowing this, you can improve your keyword research.

what-people-search-for

How to Use Traffic Sources Report

Because there are so many ways for a viewer to discover your videos, it’s important for you to know what is most effective.

If you have a new video coming out and you want to promote it, understanding where your previous videos are being discovered will help you strategize, giving it the best opportunity immediately.

10. Devices

Know What Devices Your Viewers Are Watching From

what-devices-your-viewers-are-watching-from

The way viewers watch content on their mobile phones is very different from the way they watch on television. By understanding how the majority of your viewers are watching your content, you can better design and structure your video.

For example, if you see that you have a large following that watches your content on mobile, then it might not be a good idea to load your video with too much text, as it’ll be hard for them to read.

You cannot control how people watch your content, but by better understanding their preferences, you can design your content to make it the best for their ideal situation.

11. Translations

See If You Need to Include Multi-Languages or Translation to Your Videos

The Translations report is where you can see how your viewers are watching your videos in terms of using translations and subtitles.

If you are creating content that targets international viewers, it’s good to know if they are engaging with your translation assets, including subtitles.

For example, if you see an increase in viewers from Brazil, do a quick translation of your transcript and upload the Portuguese subtitles and see if it increases viewers.

12. Subscribers

Find Out Where People Clicked Subscribe

In the Subscribers report, you can see where most of your subscribers came from and where people unsubscribe.

where-people-clicked-subscribe

If you see that you are getting a lot of conversions from the YouTube Watch Page, you can dig in and see which video specifically you should give credit to for earning your subscribers — and which ones are causing people to unsubscribe.

analyzing-conversion

Find Out Which YouTube Keywords Are Leading to Subscriptions

Click into YouTube search to see the most popular search terms that have lead to people subscribing to your channel.

keywords-leading-to-subscription

See Which Date You Got The Most Subscribers

Click into Date and find out if there was something significant that happened that day that made people subscribe to your channel more than others?

date-you-got-the-most-subscribers

How to Use the Subscriber Report

Understanding which video drives viewers to become subscribers and which videos turn people off so that they unsubscribe will tell you a lot about the content you should be creating.

If you see a video is earning you a lot of subscribers, it might be a good idea to give it a boost and make sure more people discover it. However, if you see a video is causing people to click unsubscribe, even though it might be a video you love, consider removing it from your channel as it might be doing more harm than good for your channel growth.

13. Likes and Dislikes

See the Likes and Dislikes of Individual Videos

In addition to seeing the total Likes and Dislikes your channel received, in this report, you can see the Likes and Dislikes of individual videos. This gives you a quick glance at how your viewers are enjoying your channel and videos.

likes-and-dislikes

Compare Likes and Dislikes with Other Metrics

See if there is a correlation between the channel’s performance and how viewers give Likes and Dislikes. Does increasing views get you more likes? Did a dip in views cause people to stop liking your videos?

Getting more of these data will help you plan new tactics to increase engagements.

likes-and-dislikes-with-other-metrics

See Which Date You Got the Most Likes and Dislikes

Identify the days you got a lot of Likes or Dislikes, and ask, was there something particular that happened that led to the high numbers?

date-you-got-the-most-likes-and-dislikes

Compare Subscriber vs Non-Subscriber Likes and Dislikes

Knowing how your subscribers and non-subscribers are responding to your content will give you a good idea at how effective your video is at delighting those that know your content well, and those that are newer to your videos.

likes-and-dislikes-between-subscribers-and-non-subscribers

How to Use the Likes and Dislikes Report

As a creator, you always want to know how your videos are received. Knowing how your audience feels about your content, even if it’s just a Like or Dislike click, is a good indication of whether the public found your work: educational, inspirational, or entertaining.

14. Videos in Playlists

Find Out How Many Videos Are In Playlists

When a video is added to a playlist, it means someone thought it was relevant or they enjoyed it so much they added it to their Favorite list.

Having videos added to playlists is a good thing because it increases the chances of being discovered as people looking for a bunch of content within a category can watch it all linearly.

videos-in-playlists

See Which Video Is In The Most Playlists

By having a report to see which videos have been added to the playlist, you can see that there is an interest in this type of content. With this knowledge, you can decide that perhaps the audience may be interested in a series around this topic.

video-in-the-most-playlists

See If There Is a Correlation Between Videos in Playlists and Watch Time

Identify if there are any direct or indirect effects of having videos in the playlist by comparing it to important metrics such as Watch Time. If you see that there is a boost for days when more videos are added to the playlist, you can start planning more strategies to get video features along with other related content.

correalation-between-videos-in-playlist-and-watch-time

How to Use Videos in Playlist

The Videos in the Playlist report give you another perspective on the popularity of videos. Unlike Views or Watch Time, adding a video to a playlist means that the audience will likely watch it again, as they are saving it amongst related content or as a favorite video.

15. Comments

See How Many People Have Commented On Channel Or Specific Videos

Select a time period and see how many comments your channel and videos got at that point. Knowing which video gets you the most comments and when it happens, gives you a good idea what type of conversations your audience is interested in having.

the-number-of-commented-people

Compare Different Videos and Time Period to See How Your Videos Are Engaging Audience

Evaluate how your videos are performing by comparing them, and identifying what makes a more engaging video for your audience.

how-your-videos-are-engaging-audience

How to Use Comments Report

If there is a video that triggered a debate within your community or if a video led to a lot of questions, this may inspire you to create more content around that topic.

However, there are also benefits of using an external analytics tool like Sotrender . You can adjust the amount of time you want to analyze, visualize the metrics in different ways, and even customize what you want to show in the graphs. What’s more, Sotrender has it’s own metric called the Activity Index, which indicates to what extent your audience is engaging with your videos. You can use this metric in combination with others to see what content your audience is really invested in.

how-to-use-comments-report

16. Sharing

See How Many Times Your Videos Have Been Shared

This report shows you how frequently your audience is sharing your videos to their networks. In addition to Views and Watch Time, knowing the shareability of your content helps guide your videos in achieving viral status.

how-many-times-your-videos-have-been-shared

Know which platform your audience is most active on. Understanding this can help you tailor your content to be more shareable on those channels or you can discover your audience’s account on those services and thank them personality.

most-popular-service-for-your-channel

See How Frequently a Video is Getting Shared

Understand how your videos are getting shared by your viewers. Do you see a spike in shares the first few days after publishing and then it becomes forgotten or is it an evergreen video that keeps getting consistent shares through its lifetime?

the-frequecy-of-a-video-getting-shared-one

Compare Sharing to Views

By comparing Shares to other metrics such as Views and Watch Time, you can see if there is a correlation to performance and the amount the video is shared.

compare-sharing-to-views

How to Use Sharing Report

Understand what videos you create are more likely to get shares. If you are making a lot of how-to videos, a lot of people might be searching for the content, but unless it is highly relevant, it won’t get shared. The type of content that gets shared are the ones that have an interesting story and delights people.

If you find that a lot of people are sharing your content on a specific service, you may consider that as the platform to best expand your channel on.

17. Annotations

Find Out How Many Annotations Were Click Within a Period

When you add annotations to your videos, you would want to know if your audience is actually engaging with it. This report gives you an overview of how frequently your viewers are clicking on the links.

This report also shows you how often viewers choose to close your Annotation completely, giving you an indication that they have no interest in the link.

annotations-clicked-within-a-period

Compare Performance of Different Annotations

This report allows you to see which type of annotations are performing the best for your audience.

compare-performance-of-different-annotations

See Annotation Performance of a Specific Video

Click into a specific video to see which type of annotations are getting engagement and at what time it is happening. If you see that many annotation clicks are happening at a certain point in your video, going forward with your new videos that is where you can insert it.

annotation-performance-of-a-specific-video

How to Use Annotations

By finding out when in the video your audience engages with annotations and what type of annotations performs the best, you will have more insights on designing your videos and where to position the annotations to get the optimal results.

18. Cards

See Which Card Teasers and Cards Are Getting Clicked

Find out which videos are driving the most Card clicks and which type of Cards your audience is most interested in.

card-teasers-get-clicked

Are viewers more interested in watching more videos or are they wanting to read a post from your blog (associated website)? This report is where you can find out by clicking into Card Type.

card-type

See what is happening on screen that is making the card more click-worthy, this can help you plan out your next video so that you direct your viewers’ attention to the clickable card teaser so they see it.

on-screen-contentclick-worthy-link

How to Use Cards Report

This report helps you understand the different cards and how they are performing within your videos so that you can better plan your content to increase the chances of your audience engaging with your cards.

19. End Screens

See How Often The End Screen Is Shown And Clicked

By seeing how many times the End Screen is shown, you can have an idea of how often viewers reach the end of your videos.

Then it’s good to see what percentage of them actually click to engage with your channel and content more.

end-screen-get-clicked

See Performance of Each End Screen Elements

In this report, you can see which End Screen Element is driving the most clicks and better understand the viewer’s motivation at the end of your videos.

performance-of-each-end-screen-elements

Because you can have multiple elements in the End Screen, you would want to see which one is performing the best.

most-popular-screen-elements-within-the-same-video

See Which Videos YouTube Chooses As Best For Viewers

In this report, you can also see the performance of different End Screen Element Types.

videos-that-youtube-chooses-as-best

One of these elements is the Best for Viewer, which allows YouTube to determine which of your video is best to present to the viewer in relation to their browsing history and interests.

By clicking into the Best for Viewer section you can see the top-performing videos that YouTube suggested to your viewers. Does it align with what you think is your best video?

top-performing-videos-that-youtube-suggest

How to Use The End Screens Report

The End Screens report is great for letting you know which of your existing content the audience is interested in seeing after they finished watching one of your videos. As you learn more about your viewers and accumulate more videos, with the help of the End Screens report, you can determine which videos to use to increase Views and Watch Time.

Conclusion

Television producers pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to data companies to get the same set of analytics that YouTube offers its creators for free.

Learning how to use analytics is not always a skill YouTubers think about when they are making videos, but it plays such an instrumental part throughout the whole stage of creation, from ideation to distribution.

Understanding how your videos are performing shines a light on your process, helps you evaluate what is working and what isn’t, and empower you to think beyond the lens and create videos that really resonates with your growing audience.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Filmora, which is equipped with its own footage stock Wondershare Filmstock and will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

Download Filmora9 Win Version Download Filmora9 Mac Version

author avatar

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

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As a YouTuber, you know those famous metrics: Views, Subscribers, and Watch Time. Those YouTube analytics are easy to understand. But YouTube offers much more data.

YouTube data is valuable because it can show you why you aren’t getting more subscribers and why certain videos aren’t getting the views you expected. Data can also identify all the positive results and give you insights into what worked.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to use YouTube Analytics to gain knowledge, take action, and grow your channel.

YouTube Analytics:

  1. Overview
  2. Realtime
  3. Revenue
  4. Ad Rates
  5. Watch Time
  6. Audience Retention
  7. Demographics
  8. Playback Locations
  9. Traffic Sources
  10. Devices
  11. Translations
  12. Subscribers
  13. Likes and Dislikes
  14. Videos in Playlists
  15. Comments
  16. Sharing
  17. Annotations
  18. Cards
  19. End Screens

When you enter your YouTube Creator Studio, you will find the Analytics Tab on the left-hand-side menu. Click into it and you will see a whole list of features, each linking to its own dashboard.

youtube-creator-sutdio

But with all this information, it can get a little overwhelming for new YouTubers. Don’t sweat. Let’s walk through each section to identify:

- What information it is displaying

- What issues it addresses

- What you can do to improve the results

1. Overview

Use Overview Report for Quick Analysis

The Overview report is the first page you land on when you click into Analytics, and it’s what you want to see when you are checking in.

The Overview dashboard breaks down all your key stats. If you want a deeper dive, you can click into each of the section headers and it will give you an in-depth look at the analytics of that specific category.

youtube-creator-studio-overview

Personalize Your Overview

By default, the dashboard will show you the stats from the last 28 days, but you can personalize the time frame to see the data of that specific period.

data-of-specific-period

If you only want to focus on the performance of your channel on a specific region, you can customize that as well:

data-of-specific-region

Note: You will be able to change the time frame and region for all the data within YouTube Analytics.

See Your Top Performing Videos In Overview

The Overview dashboard highlights your Top 10 videos. Right away you can see the Watch Time, Views, and Estimated Revenue of those high performing videos.

top-performing-videos-in-overview

Get Insights On Your Audience In Overview

In Overview you can see where the majority of your audience is from, what gender they are, how they are discovering your videos in Traffic Source, and where they are watching your video in Playback Locations:

your-audience-in-overview

How to Use the Overview Dashboard

The Overview dashboard is your mission control. I recommend popping in weekly to get a top view of your channel’s performance.

If you notice anything unusual or surprising, such as a spike in Shares, you can then dig into the individual data and identify the cause.

2. Realtime

See The Performance of Your Channel

The Realtime report is a fantastic tool for seeing the immediate performance of your channel, which automatically updates every 10 seconds. There are two main views: The last 48 hours and the Last 60 Minutes.

performance-of-your-channel

See Performance of Your 25 Most Recently Published Videos

In the Realtime dashboard, you will see the last 48 hours and last 60-minute performance of your 25 most recently published videos.

If you have recently shared a new video, you should log into the Realtime dashboard to get a quick glance at the performance.

most-recently-published-videos

See How and Where Your Videos Are Being Viewed At the Moment

If you want to find out how many people have viewed your videos from a mobile device or how big your audience currently is, you can do that in the Realtime report.

- Select Device to see if you have more viewers on Desktop, Mobile, or Tablet.

- Select Operating System to find out if you have more Android viewers or iOS viewers in the past two days.

- Select Geography to see which region you are getting the most views and when viewerships are dropping because most likely people in that area are sleeping.

If you notice that you are getting a lot of views from the US, but also notice that people are about to go to sleep and the trend shows that it drops at that point in the past 24 hours, you can decide whether to schedule the post for the next morning or you can see if a boost at this point can keep the audience awake.

real-time-data

How to Use the Realtime Dashboard

If YouTube sees that your recently published video is performing well right off the bat, then it will give your video a better chance of trending, ranking higher in search, and reaching more viewers.

Getting early insights on a recently published video may help you adjust your promotion strategy as needed.

For example, if you published a video this morning and shared it on your Facebook page, and you checked in this morning and saw that there was only a small amount of views, you may want to share it on a different platform so that it can get more exposure.

3. Revenue

See How Much Money Your Channel Has Made

Select a specific timeline and see how much your channel has made from ads and YouTube Red viewers during that duration.

There are 3 ways to change the timeline:

  1. Dropdown menu

revenue-drop-down-menu

  1. Calendar

revenue-calendar

  1. Slide Bar

slide-bar-line-chart

You can also change how you view your data, whether Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc. This way you can see exactly how much you made each day, week, or month, and determine if you can correlate a particular dip or spike to an event that occurred.

slide-bar-daily-view

Identify Your Highest Earning Videos

In the Revenue report, you can see which videos are earning you the most. Consider how these videos are successful:

- Was the content great?

- Was it the perfect length?

- Was it a well-structured video?

- Was the video’s pacing fast?

Once you’ve done a full evaluation, see if you can apply it to your other videos.

highest-earning-videos

Which Country Is Earning You the Most Money

Different countries have different rates for how much creators can make off Adsense. Click into Geography and see how much you are making in different countries and consider which audience is best to focus your attention on with the intention of increasing revenue.

Compare Estimated Revenue Earning to Other Metrics

Know more about how your data are related by comparing to see if Revenue is affected by the performance of metrics in other categories such as Views. Does a rise in view change your revenue?

revenue-earning-to-other-metrics

How to Use the Revenue Dashboard

Figuring how to make money on YouTube is tricky and any insight you can get can give you an advantage, steer you in the right direction, and help you focus on what matters.

As you can see in the example in the graph from the section above, the View count has been fairly consistent, however, the Revenue is sporadic.

This tells you that while Views may be an important metric, it won’t affect your revenue. This can mean that you haven’t been reaching the audience that will engage with the ads, consider a slight content shift.

4. Ad Rates

Understanding the Ad Rates Report

the-ad-rates-report

YouTube Ad Revenue: This is the estimated gross total of all the money you made from ads sold via Google and Google partners.

Estimated Monetized Playbacks: This is the number of times your audience is shown an ad.

Playback-based CPM: This is an estimation from YouTube on how much money you can make if you had 1,000 views from a monetized video. This is based on the parameters of the advertisers, your current number of views, and where your viewers are from.

CPM: This is the estimated amount you will earn for 1,000 ad impressions.

See Which Monetized Videos Are Earning Your Ad Revenue

Unlike the Revenue dashboard, the Ad Rates report dives deeper into the performance of individual monetized videos.

This allows you to not only see the estimated earnings but also how many times the ad was shown. On top of that, the CPM gives you an idea of what YouTube deems to be more valuable content for advertisers, which gives you a better idea about the capabilities of the video and offers insight into the type of videos you make in the future.

monetized-videos

See How Each Ad Type Is Performing Within Individual Video

Click into Ad Type and you will be able to see the performance of different types of Ads (skippable video ads, display ads, bumper ads, and non-skippable video ads.)

You can see these details from the channel level or from an individual video level.

ad-type-within-individual-video

How to Use Ad Rates Report

Ad performance might not be something you think about at the early stages. You want to make videos, and not worry too much about ads, after all.

But as you accumulate more and more monetized videos, and you will start seeing which videos are stronger in getting you ad engagements and which aren’t. The result might surprise you and help inform your next phase of videos.

5. Watch Time

See The Aggregated Time Your Viewers Spent Watching Your Videos

YouTube puts a lot of weight on this metric because they know that the more time people spend watching your original content, the more time they will have to show ads to your audience. Overall, you’ll want to see a steady rise for your Watch Time as it will indicate that you have a growing dedicated viewership.

the-aggregated-time

In the graph, you will also be able to see the combined Views of all your videos, as well as the segmented performance of YouTube Red viewers.

YouTube Red is YouTube’s subscription plan. It is currently only available in Australia, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, and the United States.

YouTube Red offers ad-free content that can be enjoyed offline. Since the viewers with YouTube Red won’t see ads, YouTube will give you partial revenue from Red viewers.

Compare Performance of Videos in the Graph

Put your videos side by side to compare the performance over the course of a time period.

performance-of-videos-in-the-graph

How to Use Watch Time Report

If you want to be in YouTube’s algorithm’s good books, then you will need to put some attention on your channel’s Watch Time. Always consider ways in which you can improve this metric.

Some strategies include:

- Add videos to optimized playlists

- Improving titles and thumbnails

- Increase YouTube subscribers

- Add annotations to your videos

- Add end cards to your videos

6. Audience Retention

See How Long Your Viewers Spend Watching Your Videos

Like Watch Time, Audience Retention is a metric YouTube uses to determine how valuable your video is and how worthy it is in being discovered by your audience. It’s important to learn where in your video you are losing viewers.

In Audience Retention, there are two main categories you can see.

  1. Average View Duration shows how much time all your viewers from a certain time frame spend watching your video.
  2. Average Percentage Viewed shows how much the average person watched from your videos.

In this example, we see that the average length of a video watched is 1:14 and the average viewer will watch 53% of the video.

While you should aim to have 100% audience retention, if you can get an average above 50%, you are doing something right. Anything under, you may want to consider changing up your strategy (content, structure, pacing, etc.).

average-view-duration

See Audience Retention of Individual Videos

Absolute Audience Retention: This report shows you the number of views at every point in the video as a percentage. This will let you know which part of the video is most popular, which part is causing a big drop off, and which part viewers are skipping to or rewatching.

absolute-audience-retention

Relative Audience Retention: This report gives you a visualization of how your video’s audience retention performance compares to all YouTube videos of a similar length.

If the line indicates that you are above average at a certain point, that is where your video is doing a better job holding the viewer’s attention at that point compared to most other videos.

relative-audience-retention

How to Use Audience Retention

Audience retention can give you a lot of insights on how you should be structuring your videos. If you notice a steep drop in viewership, you can assume that what the viewer is watching is not that interesting.

However, if you notice a sudden peak in the middle of your video, you can assume that a) viewers are skipping to it or b) viewers are rewatching that section.

In the example below, we see that there is a peak at the point in this video where a specific part of a tutorial is shown. Viewers were most likely rewatching to confirm they understand the information, so they can apply it themselves.

how-to-use-audience-retention

Knowing this, for the next video you make, you can better anticipate where your viewers are going to need more time on a specific part or whether you should skip ahead to something more interesting.

7. Demographics

Understand the Average Age and Gender of Your Audience

The first thing you’ll see when you enter the Demographic dashboard is the segmentation of your audience by age and gender. This gives you a good indication of who your overall channel is currently attracting.

demographics

Learn about the videos that are most popular within that demographic to get better insights to what is most appealing for that group.

You will also see the Watch Time percentage that each video gets in comparison with all the videos in your channel.

Data Split by Age:

data-split-by-age

Data Split by Gender:

data-split-by-gender

See Geographic Distribution of Different Demographics

Not only will you be able to see which region the majority of your viewerships are from, but you can also segment and compare by demographics. This will give you a more insightful view of how your channel is performing across the world for different people.

geographic-distribution

Additionally, you can click into specific videos on your channel and see how it is performing in different regions.

How to Use Demographics Report

Understanding which group makes up the majority of your viewership will help you decide how to strategize the next phase of content. Will you keep growing that audience or will you want to grow in another demographic?

If you noticed that you have an underperforming female demographic in India, you can plan out some content that focus on that community. Without this report, you cannot see where you are missing opportunities.

8. Playback Locations

Find Out Where People Are Watching Your Videos

There are a number of ways people can watch your YouTube video:

- YouTube Watch Page

- YouTube Channel Page

- Embedded Video Player (Website or App)

- Other

If your video is only promoted organically your views will likely be coming from the YouTube Watch Page, but if other media publications embedded your video, and it’s getting a lot of views, you can see it here.

playback-locations

Which External Source Are Your Videos Being Watched

By clicking into the Embedded in External Websites and Apps report, you’ll be able to see all the different websites and apps that your video is featured on. This will give you a good indication of which sites and apps are driving the most views.

external-source

How to Use Playback Locations Report

Knowing where your videos are being played back is important, especially if you are getting a lot of views from an external source.

You can reach out to the website that has embedded your video and thank them for sharing your content, and maybe they will be happy to share more. This way you create a relationship with them, which can increase your network and also improve the chances of your videos being discovered.

9. Traffic Sources

Find Out How People Are Discovering Your Videos

In the Traffic Sources report, you can see what is the most popular way your video is being discovered.

This can include advertisements that you pay for, external referrals such as links from other websites, suggested videos, and searches on YouTube to name a few.

traffic-sources

See Which Videos Are Suggesting Yours To Viewers

If you see that you are getting a lot of viewers coming from Suggested Videos, go to that report and see which external video was directing viewers to yours. These suggested videos can be your own or it can be from another YouTube creator.

video-suggesting-yours

See What People Search For To Discover Your Video

By clicking into the YouTube search, you can see what viewers searched in order to find your video. This can be useful in understanding your viewers’ mindset: were they trying to solve a problem or answer a question?

Knowing this, you can improve your keyword research.

what-people-search-for

How to Use Traffic Sources Report

Because there are so many ways for a viewer to discover your videos, it’s important for you to know what is most effective.

If you have a new video coming out and you want to promote it, understanding where your previous videos are being discovered will help you strategize, giving it the best opportunity immediately.

10. Devices

Know What Devices Your Viewers Are Watching From

what-devices-your-viewers-are-watching-from

The way viewers watch content on their mobile phones is very different from the way they watch on television. By understanding how the majority of your viewers are watching your content, you can better design and structure your video.

For example, if you see that you have a large following that watches your content on mobile, then it might not be a good idea to load your video with too much text, as it’ll be hard for them to read.

You cannot control how people watch your content, but by better understanding their preferences, you can design your content to make it the best for their ideal situation.

11. Translations

See If You Need to Include Multi-Languages or Translation to Your Videos

The Translations report is where you can see how your viewers are watching your videos in terms of using translations and subtitles.

If you are creating content that targets international viewers, it’s good to know if they are engaging with your translation assets, including subtitles.

For example, if you see an increase in viewers from Brazil, do a quick translation of your transcript and upload the Portuguese subtitles and see if it increases viewers.

12. Subscribers

Find Out Where People Clicked Subscribe

In the Subscribers report, you can see where most of your subscribers came from and where people unsubscribe.

where-people-clicked-subscribe

If you see that you are getting a lot of conversions from the YouTube Watch Page, you can dig in and see which video specifically you should give credit to for earning your subscribers — and which ones are causing people to unsubscribe.

analyzing-conversion

Find Out Which YouTube Keywords Are Leading to Subscriptions

Click into YouTube search to see the most popular search terms that have lead to people subscribing to your channel.

keywords-leading-to-subscription

See Which Date You Got The Most Subscribers

Click into Date and find out if there was something significant that happened that day that made people subscribe to your channel more than others?

date-you-got-the-most-subscribers

How to Use the Subscriber Report

Understanding which video drives viewers to become subscribers and which videos turn people off so that they unsubscribe will tell you a lot about the content you should be creating.

If you see a video is earning you a lot of subscribers, it might be a good idea to give it a boost and make sure more people discover it. However, if you see a video is causing people to click unsubscribe, even though it might be a video you love, consider removing it from your channel as it might be doing more harm than good for your channel growth.

13. Likes and Dislikes

See the Likes and Dislikes of Individual Videos

In addition to seeing the total Likes and Dislikes your channel received, in this report, you can see the Likes and Dislikes of individual videos. This gives you a quick glance at how your viewers are enjoying your channel and videos.

likes-and-dislikes

Compare Likes and Dislikes with Other Metrics

See if there is a correlation between the channel’s performance and how viewers give Likes and Dislikes. Does increasing views get you more likes? Did a dip in views cause people to stop liking your videos?

Getting more of these data will help you plan new tactics to increase engagements.

likes-and-dislikes-with-other-metrics

See Which Date You Got the Most Likes and Dislikes

Identify the days you got a lot of Likes or Dislikes, and ask, was there something particular that happened that led to the high numbers?

date-you-got-the-most-likes-and-dislikes

Compare Subscriber vs Non-Subscriber Likes and Dislikes

Knowing how your subscribers and non-subscribers are responding to your content will give you a good idea at how effective your video is at delighting those that know your content well, and those that are newer to your videos.

likes-and-dislikes-between-subscribers-and-non-subscribers

How to Use the Likes and Dislikes Report

As a creator, you always want to know how your videos are received. Knowing how your audience feels about your content, even if it’s just a Like or Dislike click, is a good indication of whether the public found your work: educational, inspirational, or entertaining.

14. Videos in Playlists

Find Out How Many Videos Are In Playlists

When a video is added to a playlist, it means someone thought it was relevant or they enjoyed it so much they added it to their Favorite list.

Having videos added to playlists is a good thing because it increases the chances of being discovered as people looking for a bunch of content within a category can watch it all linearly.

videos-in-playlists

See Which Video Is In The Most Playlists

By having a report to see which videos have been added to the playlist, you can see that there is an interest in this type of content. With this knowledge, you can decide that perhaps the audience may be interested in a series around this topic.

video-in-the-most-playlists

See If There Is a Correlation Between Videos in Playlists and Watch Time

Identify if there are any direct or indirect effects of having videos in the playlist by comparing it to important metrics such as Watch Time. If you see that there is a boost for days when more videos are added to the playlist, you can start planning more strategies to get video features along with other related content.

correalation-between-videos-in-playlist-and-watch-time

How to Use Videos in Playlist

The Videos in the Playlist report give you another perspective on the popularity of videos. Unlike Views or Watch Time, adding a video to a playlist means that the audience will likely watch it again, as they are saving it amongst related content or as a favorite video.

15. Comments

See How Many People Have Commented On Channel Or Specific Videos

Select a time period and see how many comments your channel and videos got at that point. Knowing which video gets you the most comments and when it happens, gives you a good idea what type of conversations your audience is interested in having.

the-number-of-commented-people

Compare Different Videos and Time Period to See How Your Videos Are Engaging Audience

Evaluate how your videos are performing by comparing them, and identifying what makes a more engaging video for your audience.

how-your-videos-are-engaging-audience

How to Use Comments Report

If there is a video that triggered a debate within your community or if a video led to a lot of questions, this may inspire you to create more content around that topic.

However, there are also benefits of using an external analytics tool like Sotrender . You can adjust the amount of time you want to analyze, visualize the metrics in different ways, and even customize what you want to show in the graphs. What’s more, Sotrender has it’s own metric called the Activity Index, which indicates to what extent your audience is engaging with your videos. You can use this metric in combination with others to see what content your audience is really invested in.

how-to-use-comments-report

16. Sharing

See How Many Times Your Videos Have Been Shared

This report shows you how frequently your audience is sharing your videos to their networks. In addition to Views and Watch Time, knowing the shareability of your content helps guide your videos in achieving viral status.

how-many-times-your-videos-have-been-shared

Know which platform your audience is most active on. Understanding this can help you tailor your content to be more shareable on those channels or you can discover your audience’s account on those services and thank them personality.

most-popular-service-for-your-channel

See How Frequently a Video is Getting Shared

Understand how your videos are getting shared by your viewers. Do you see a spike in shares the first few days after publishing and then it becomes forgotten or is it an evergreen video that keeps getting consistent shares through its lifetime?

the-frequecy-of-a-video-getting-shared-one

Compare Sharing to Views

By comparing Shares to other metrics such as Views and Watch Time, you can see if there is a correlation to performance and the amount the video is shared.

compare-sharing-to-views

How to Use Sharing Report

Understand what videos you create are more likely to get shares. If you are making a lot of how-to videos, a lot of people might be searching for the content, but unless it is highly relevant, it won’t get shared. The type of content that gets shared are the ones that have an interesting story and delights people.

If you find that a lot of people are sharing your content on a specific service, you may consider that as the platform to best expand your channel on.

17. Annotations

Find Out How Many Annotations Were Click Within a Period

When you add annotations to your videos, you would want to know if your audience is actually engaging with it. This report gives you an overview of how frequently your viewers are clicking on the links.

This report also shows you how often viewers choose to close your Annotation completely, giving you an indication that they have no interest in the link.

annotations-clicked-within-a-period

Compare Performance of Different Annotations

This report allows you to see which type of annotations are performing the best for your audience.

compare-performance-of-different-annotations

See Annotation Performance of a Specific Video

Click into a specific video to see which type of annotations are getting engagement and at what time it is happening. If you see that many annotation clicks are happening at a certain point in your video, going forward with your new videos that is where you can insert it.

annotation-performance-of-a-specific-video

How to Use Annotations

By finding out when in the video your audience engages with annotations and what type of annotations performs the best, you will have more insights on designing your videos and where to position the annotations to get the optimal results.

18. Cards

See Which Card Teasers and Cards Are Getting Clicked

Find out which videos are driving the most Card clicks and which type of Cards your audience is most interested in.

card-teasers-get-clicked

Are viewers more interested in watching more videos or are they wanting to read a post from your blog (associated website)? This report is where you can find out by clicking into Card Type.

card-type

See what is happening on screen that is making the card more click-worthy, this can help you plan out your next video so that you direct your viewers’ attention to the clickable card teaser so they see it.

on-screen-contentclick-worthy-link

How to Use Cards Report

This report helps you understand the different cards and how they are performing within your videos so that you can better plan your content to increase the chances of your audience engaging with your cards.

19. End Screens

See How Often The End Screen Is Shown And Clicked

By seeing how many times the End Screen is shown, you can have an idea of how often viewers reach the end of your videos.

Then it’s good to see what percentage of them actually click to engage with your channel and content more.

end-screen-get-clicked

See Performance of Each End Screen Elements

In this report, you can see which End Screen Element is driving the most clicks and better understand the viewer’s motivation at the end of your videos.

performance-of-each-end-screen-elements

Because you can have multiple elements in the End Screen, you would want to see which one is performing the best.

most-popular-screen-elements-within-the-same-video

See Which Videos YouTube Chooses As Best For Viewers

In this report, you can also see the performance of different End Screen Element Types.

videos-that-youtube-chooses-as-best

One of these elements is the Best for Viewer, which allows YouTube to determine which of your video is best to present to the viewer in relation to their browsing history and interests.

By clicking into the Best for Viewer section you can see the top-performing videos that YouTube suggested to your viewers. Does it align with what you think is your best video?

top-performing-videos-that-youtube-suggest

How to Use The End Screens Report

The End Screens report is great for letting you know which of your existing content the audience is interested in seeing after they finished watching one of your videos. As you learn more about your viewers and accumulate more videos, with the help of the End Screens report, you can determine which videos to use to increase Views and Watch Time.

Conclusion

Television producers pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to data companies to get the same set of analytics that YouTube offers its creators for free.

Learning how to use analytics is not always a skill YouTubers think about when they are making videos, but it plays such an instrumental part throughout the whole stage of creation, from ideation to distribution.

Understanding how your videos are performing shines a light on your process, helps you evaluate what is working and what isn’t, and empower you to think beyond the lens and create videos that really resonates with your growing audience.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Filmora, which is equipped with its own footage stock Wondershare Filmstock and will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

Download Filmora9 Win Version Download Filmora9 Mac Version

author avatar

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

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As a YouTuber, you know those famous metrics: Views, Subscribers, and Watch Time. Those YouTube analytics are easy to understand. But YouTube offers much more data.

YouTube data is valuable because it can show you why you aren’t getting more subscribers and why certain videos aren’t getting the views you expected. Data can also identify all the positive results and give you insights into what worked.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to use YouTube Analytics to gain knowledge, take action, and grow your channel.

YouTube Analytics:

  1. Overview
  2. Realtime
  3. Revenue
  4. Ad Rates
  5. Watch Time
  6. Audience Retention
  7. Demographics
  8. Playback Locations
  9. Traffic Sources
  10. Devices
  11. Translations
  12. Subscribers
  13. Likes and Dislikes
  14. Videos in Playlists
  15. Comments
  16. Sharing
  17. Annotations
  18. Cards
  19. End Screens

When you enter your YouTube Creator Studio, you will find the Analytics Tab on the left-hand-side menu. Click into it and you will see a whole list of features, each linking to its own dashboard.

youtube-creator-sutdio

But with all this information, it can get a little overwhelming for new YouTubers. Don’t sweat. Let’s walk through each section to identify:

- What information it is displaying

- What issues it addresses

- What you can do to improve the results

1. Overview

Use Overview Report for Quick Analysis

The Overview report is the first page you land on when you click into Analytics, and it’s what you want to see when you are checking in.

The Overview dashboard breaks down all your key stats. If you want a deeper dive, you can click into each of the section headers and it will give you an in-depth look at the analytics of that specific category.

youtube-creator-studio-overview

Personalize Your Overview

By default, the dashboard will show you the stats from the last 28 days, but you can personalize the time frame to see the data of that specific period.

data-of-specific-period

If you only want to focus on the performance of your channel on a specific region, you can customize that as well:

data-of-specific-region

Note: You will be able to change the time frame and region for all the data within YouTube Analytics.

See Your Top Performing Videos In Overview

The Overview dashboard highlights your Top 10 videos. Right away you can see the Watch Time, Views, and Estimated Revenue of those high performing videos.

top-performing-videos-in-overview

Get Insights On Your Audience In Overview

In Overview you can see where the majority of your audience is from, what gender they are, how they are discovering your videos in Traffic Source, and where they are watching your video in Playback Locations:

your-audience-in-overview

How to Use the Overview Dashboard

The Overview dashboard is your mission control. I recommend popping in weekly to get a top view of your channel’s performance.

If you notice anything unusual or surprising, such as a spike in Shares, you can then dig into the individual data and identify the cause.

2. Realtime

See The Performance of Your Channel

The Realtime report is a fantastic tool for seeing the immediate performance of your channel, which automatically updates every 10 seconds. There are two main views: The last 48 hours and the Last 60 Minutes.

performance-of-your-channel

See Performance of Your 25 Most Recently Published Videos

In the Realtime dashboard, you will see the last 48 hours and last 60-minute performance of your 25 most recently published videos.

If you have recently shared a new video, you should log into the Realtime dashboard to get a quick glance at the performance.

most-recently-published-videos

See How and Where Your Videos Are Being Viewed At the Moment

If you want to find out how many people have viewed your videos from a mobile device or how big your audience currently is, you can do that in the Realtime report.

- Select Device to see if you have more viewers on Desktop, Mobile, or Tablet.

- Select Operating System to find out if you have more Android viewers or iOS viewers in the past two days.

- Select Geography to see which region you are getting the most views and when viewerships are dropping because most likely people in that area are sleeping.

If you notice that you are getting a lot of views from the US, but also notice that people are about to go to sleep and the trend shows that it drops at that point in the past 24 hours, you can decide whether to schedule the post for the next morning or you can see if a boost at this point can keep the audience awake.

real-time-data

How to Use the Realtime Dashboard

If YouTube sees that your recently published video is performing well right off the bat, then it will give your video a better chance of trending, ranking higher in search, and reaching more viewers.

Getting early insights on a recently published video may help you adjust your promotion strategy as needed.

For example, if you published a video this morning and shared it on your Facebook page, and you checked in this morning and saw that there was only a small amount of views, you may want to share it on a different platform so that it can get more exposure.

3. Revenue

See How Much Money Your Channel Has Made

Select a specific timeline and see how much your channel has made from ads and YouTube Red viewers during that duration.

There are 3 ways to change the timeline:

  1. Dropdown menu

revenue-drop-down-menu

  1. Calendar

revenue-calendar

  1. Slide Bar

slide-bar-line-chart

You can also change how you view your data, whether Daily, Weekly, Monthly, etc. This way you can see exactly how much you made each day, week, or month, and determine if you can correlate a particular dip or spike to an event that occurred.

slide-bar-daily-view

Identify Your Highest Earning Videos

In the Revenue report, you can see which videos are earning you the most. Consider how these videos are successful:

- Was the content great?

- Was it the perfect length?

- Was it a well-structured video?

- Was the video’s pacing fast?

Once you’ve done a full evaluation, see if you can apply it to your other videos.

highest-earning-videos

Which Country Is Earning You the Most Money

Different countries have different rates for how much creators can make off Adsense. Click into Geography and see how much you are making in different countries and consider which audience is best to focus your attention on with the intention of increasing revenue.

Compare Estimated Revenue Earning to Other Metrics

Know more about how your data are related by comparing to see if Revenue is affected by the performance of metrics in other categories such as Views. Does a rise in view change your revenue?

revenue-earning-to-other-metrics

How to Use the Revenue Dashboard

Figuring how to make money on YouTube is tricky and any insight you can get can give you an advantage, steer you in the right direction, and help you focus on what matters.

As you can see in the example in the graph from the section above, the View count has been fairly consistent, however, the Revenue is sporadic.

This tells you that while Views may be an important metric, it won’t affect your revenue. This can mean that you haven’t been reaching the audience that will engage with the ads, consider a slight content shift.

4. Ad Rates

Understanding the Ad Rates Report

the-ad-rates-report

YouTube Ad Revenue: This is the estimated gross total of all the money you made from ads sold via Google and Google partners.

Estimated Monetized Playbacks: This is the number of times your audience is shown an ad.

Playback-based CPM: This is an estimation from YouTube on how much money you can make if you had 1,000 views from a monetized video. This is based on the parameters of the advertisers, your current number of views, and where your viewers are from.

CPM: This is the estimated amount you will earn for 1,000 ad impressions.

See Which Monetized Videos Are Earning Your Ad Revenue

Unlike the Revenue dashboard, the Ad Rates report dives deeper into the performance of individual monetized videos.

This allows you to not only see the estimated earnings but also how many times the ad was shown. On top of that, the CPM gives you an idea of what YouTube deems to be more valuable content for advertisers, which gives you a better idea about the capabilities of the video and offers insight into the type of videos you make in the future.

monetized-videos

See How Each Ad Type Is Performing Within Individual Video

Click into Ad Type and you will be able to see the performance of different types of Ads (skippable video ads, display ads, bumper ads, and non-skippable video ads.)

You can see these details from the channel level or from an individual video level.

ad-type-within-individual-video

How to Use Ad Rates Report

Ad performance might not be something you think about at the early stages. You want to make videos, and not worry too much about ads, after all.

But as you accumulate more and more monetized videos, and you will start seeing which videos are stronger in getting you ad engagements and which aren’t. The result might surprise you and help inform your next phase of videos.

5. Watch Time

See The Aggregated Time Your Viewers Spent Watching Your Videos

YouTube puts a lot of weight on this metric because they know that the more time people spend watching your original content, the more time they will have to show ads to your audience. Overall, you’ll want to see a steady rise for your Watch Time as it will indicate that you have a growing dedicated viewership.

the-aggregated-time

In the graph, you will also be able to see the combined Views of all your videos, as well as the segmented performance of YouTube Red viewers.

YouTube Red is YouTube’s subscription plan. It is currently only available in Australia, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, and the United States.

YouTube Red offers ad-free content that can be enjoyed offline. Since the viewers with YouTube Red won’t see ads, YouTube will give you partial revenue from Red viewers.

Compare Performance of Videos in the Graph

Put your videos side by side to compare the performance over the course of a time period.

performance-of-videos-in-the-graph

How to Use Watch Time Report

If you want to be in YouTube’s algorithm’s good books, then you will need to put some attention on your channel’s Watch Time. Always consider ways in which you can improve this metric.

Some strategies include:

- Add videos to optimized playlists

- Improving titles and thumbnails

- Increase YouTube subscribers

- Add annotations to your videos

- Add end cards to your videos

6. Audience Retention

See How Long Your Viewers Spend Watching Your Videos

Like Watch Time, Audience Retention is a metric YouTube uses to determine how valuable your video is and how worthy it is in being discovered by your audience. It’s important to learn where in your video you are losing viewers.

In Audience Retention, there are two main categories you can see.

  1. Average View Duration shows how much time all your viewers from a certain time frame spend watching your video.
  2. Average Percentage Viewed shows how much the average person watched from your videos.

In this example, we see that the average length of a video watched is 1:14 and the average viewer will watch 53% of the video.

While you should aim to have 100% audience retention, if you can get an average above 50%, you are doing something right. Anything under, you may want to consider changing up your strategy (content, structure, pacing, etc.).

average-view-duration

See Audience Retention of Individual Videos

Absolute Audience Retention: This report shows you the number of views at every point in the video as a percentage. This will let you know which part of the video is most popular, which part is causing a big drop off, and which part viewers are skipping to or rewatching.

absolute-audience-retention

Relative Audience Retention: This report gives you a visualization of how your video’s audience retention performance compares to all YouTube videos of a similar length.

If the line indicates that you are above average at a certain point, that is where your video is doing a better job holding the viewer’s attention at that point compared to most other videos.

relative-audience-retention

How to Use Audience Retention

Audience retention can give you a lot of insights on how you should be structuring your videos. If you notice a steep drop in viewership, you can assume that what the viewer is watching is not that interesting.

However, if you notice a sudden peak in the middle of your video, you can assume that a) viewers are skipping to it or b) viewers are rewatching that section.

In the example below, we see that there is a peak at the point in this video where a specific part of a tutorial is shown. Viewers were most likely rewatching to confirm they understand the information, so they can apply it themselves.

how-to-use-audience-retention

Knowing this, for the next video you make, you can better anticipate where your viewers are going to need more time on a specific part or whether you should skip ahead to something more interesting.

7. Demographics

Understand the Average Age and Gender of Your Audience

The first thing you’ll see when you enter the Demographic dashboard is the segmentation of your audience by age and gender. This gives you a good indication of who your overall channel is currently attracting.

demographics

Learn about the videos that are most popular within that demographic to get better insights to what is most appealing for that group.

You will also see the Watch Time percentage that each video gets in comparison with all the videos in your channel.

Data Split by Age:

data-split-by-age

Data Split by Gender:

data-split-by-gender

See Geographic Distribution of Different Demographics

Not only will you be able to see which region the majority of your viewerships are from, but you can also segment and compare by demographics. This will give you a more insightful view of how your channel is performing across the world for different people.

geographic-distribution

Additionally, you can click into specific videos on your channel and see how it is performing in different regions.

How to Use Demographics Report

Understanding which group makes up the majority of your viewership will help you decide how to strategize the next phase of content. Will you keep growing that audience or will you want to grow in another demographic?

If you noticed that you have an underperforming female demographic in India, you can plan out some content that focus on that community. Without this report, you cannot see where you are missing opportunities.

8. Playback Locations

Find Out Where People Are Watching Your Videos

There are a number of ways people can watch your YouTube video:

- YouTube Watch Page

- YouTube Channel Page

- Embedded Video Player (Website or App)

- Other

If your video is only promoted organically your views will likely be coming from the YouTube Watch Page, but if other media publications embedded your video, and it’s getting a lot of views, you can see it here.

playback-locations

Which External Source Are Your Videos Being Watched

By clicking into the Embedded in External Websites and Apps report, you’ll be able to see all the different websites and apps that your video is featured on. This will give you a good indication of which sites and apps are driving the most views.

external-source

How to Use Playback Locations Report

Knowing where your videos are being played back is important, especially if you are getting a lot of views from an external source.

You can reach out to the website that has embedded your video and thank them for sharing your content, and maybe they will be happy to share more. This way you create a relationship with them, which can increase your network and also improve the chances of your videos being discovered.

9. Traffic Sources

Find Out How People Are Discovering Your Videos

In the Traffic Sources report, you can see what is the most popular way your video is being discovered.

This can include advertisements that you pay for, external referrals such as links from other websites, suggested videos, and searches on YouTube to name a few.

traffic-sources

See Which Videos Are Suggesting Yours To Viewers

If you see that you are getting a lot of viewers coming from Suggested Videos, go to that report and see which external video was directing viewers to yours. These suggested videos can be your own or it can be from another YouTube creator.

video-suggesting-yours

See What People Search For To Discover Your Video

By clicking into the YouTube search, you can see what viewers searched in order to find your video. This can be useful in understanding your viewers’ mindset: were they trying to solve a problem or answer a question?

Knowing this, you can improve your keyword research.

what-people-search-for

How to Use Traffic Sources Report

Because there are so many ways for a viewer to discover your videos, it’s important for you to know what is most effective.

If you have a new video coming out and you want to promote it, understanding where your previous videos are being discovered will help you strategize, giving it the best opportunity immediately.

10. Devices

Know What Devices Your Viewers Are Watching From

what-devices-your-viewers-are-watching-from

The way viewers watch content on their mobile phones is very different from the way they watch on television. By understanding how the majority of your viewers are watching your content, you can better design and structure your video.

For example, if you see that you have a large following that watches your content on mobile, then it might not be a good idea to load your video with too much text, as it’ll be hard for them to read.

You cannot control how people watch your content, but by better understanding their preferences, you can design your content to make it the best for their ideal situation.

11. Translations

See If You Need to Include Multi-Languages or Translation to Your Videos

The Translations report is where you can see how your viewers are watching your videos in terms of using translations and subtitles.

If you are creating content that targets international viewers, it’s good to know if they are engaging with your translation assets, including subtitles.

For example, if you see an increase in viewers from Brazil, do a quick translation of your transcript and upload the Portuguese subtitles and see if it increases viewers.

12. Subscribers

Find Out Where People Clicked Subscribe

In the Subscribers report, you can see where most of your subscribers came from and where people unsubscribe.

where-people-clicked-subscribe

If you see that you are getting a lot of conversions from the YouTube Watch Page, you can dig in and see which video specifically you should give credit to for earning your subscribers — and which ones are causing people to unsubscribe.

analyzing-conversion

Find Out Which YouTube Keywords Are Leading to Subscriptions

Click into YouTube search to see the most popular search terms that have lead to people subscribing to your channel.

keywords-leading-to-subscription

See Which Date You Got The Most Subscribers

Click into Date and find out if there was something significant that happened that day that made people subscribe to your channel more than others?

date-you-got-the-most-subscribers

How to Use the Subscriber Report

Understanding which video drives viewers to become subscribers and which videos turn people off so that they unsubscribe will tell you a lot about the content you should be creating.

If you see a video is earning you a lot of subscribers, it might be a good idea to give it a boost and make sure more people discover it. However, if you see a video is causing people to click unsubscribe, even though it might be a video you love, consider removing it from your channel as it might be doing more harm than good for your channel growth.

13. Likes and Dislikes

See the Likes and Dislikes of Individual Videos

In addition to seeing the total Likes and Dislikes your channel received, in this report, you can see the Likes and Dislikes of individual videos. This gives you a quick glance at how your viewers are enjoying your channel and videos.

likes-and-dislikes

Compare Likes and Dislikes with Other Metrics

See if there is a correlation between the channel’s performance and how viewers give Likes and Dislikes. Does increasing views get you more likes? Did a dip in views cause people to stop liking your videos?

Getting more of these data will help you plan new tactics to increase engagements.

likes-and-dislikes-with-other-metrics

See Which Date You Got the Most Likes and Dislikes

Identify the days you got a lot of Likes or Dislikes, and ask, was there something particular that happened that led to the high numbers?

date-you-got-the-most-likes-and-dislikes

Compare Subscriber vs Non-Subscriber Likes and Dislikes

Knowing how your subscribers and non-subscribers are responding to your content will give you a good idea at how effective your video is at delighting those that know your content well, and those that are newer to your videos.

likes-and-dislikes-between-subscribers-and-non-subscribers

How to Use the Likes and Dislikes Report

As a creator, you always want to know how your videos are received. Knowing how your audience feels about your content, even if it’s just a Like or Dislike click, is a good indication of whether the public found your work: educational, inspirational, or entertaining.

14. Videos in Playlists

Find Out How Many Videos Are In Playlists

When a video is added to a playlist, it means someone thought it was relevant or they enjoyed it so much they added it to their Favorite list.

Having videos added to playlists is a good thing because it increases the chances of being discovered as people looking for a bunch of content within a category can watch it all linearly.

videos-in-playlists

See Which Video Is In The Most Playlists

By having a report to see which videos have been added to the playlist, you can see that there is an interest in this type of content. With this knowledge, you can decide that perhaps the audience may be interested in a series around this topic.

video-in-the-most-playlists

See If There Is a Correlation Between Videos in Playlists and Watch Time

Identify if there are any direct or indirect effects of having videos in the playlist by comparing it to important metrics such as Watch Time. If you see that there is a boost for days when more videos are added to the playlist, you can start planning more strategies to get video features along with other related content.

correalation-between-videos-in-playlist-and-watch-time

How to Use Videos in Playlist

The Videos in the Playlist report give you another perspective on the popularity of videos. Unlike Views or Watch Time, adding a video to a playlist means that the audience will likely watch it again, as they are saving it amongst related content or as a favorite video.

15. Comments

See How Many People Have Commented On Channel Or Specific Videos

Select a time period and see how many comments your channel and videos got at that point. Knowing which video gets you the most comments and when it happens, gives you a good idea what type of conversations your audience is interested in having.

the-number-of-commented-people

Compare Different Videos and Time Period to See How Your Videos Are Engaging Audience

Evaluate how your videos are performing by comparing them, and identifying what makes a more engaging video for your audience.

how-your-videos-are-engaging-audience

How to Use Comments Report

If there is a video that triggered a debate within your community or if a video led to a lot of questions, this may inspire you to create more content around that topic.

However, there are also benefits of using an external analytics tool like Sotrender . You can adjust the amount of time you want to analyze, visualize the metrics in different ways, and even customize what you want to show in the graphs. What’s more, Sotrender has it’s own metric called the Activity Index, which indicates to what extent your audience is engaging with your videos. You can use this metric in combination with others to see what content your audience is really invested in.

how-to-use-comments-report

16. Sharing

See How Many Times Your Videos Have Been Shared

This report shows you how frequently your audience is sharing your videos to their networks. In addition to Views and Watch Time, knowing the shareability of your content helps guide your videos in achieving viral status.

how-many-times-your-videos-have-been-shared

Know which platform your audience is most active on. Understanding this can help you tailor your content to be more shareable on those channels or you can discover your audience’s account on those services and thank them personality.

most-popular-service-for-your-channel

See How Frequently a Video is Getting Shared

Understand how your videos are getting shared by your viewers. Do you see a spike in shares the first few days after publishing and then it becomes forgotten or is it an evergreen video that keeps getting consistent shares through its lifetime?

the-frequecy-of-a-video-getting-shared-one

Compare Sharing to Views

By comparing Shares to other metrics such as Views and Watch Time, you can see if there is a correlation to performance and the amount the video is shared.

compare-sharing-to-views

How to Use Sharing Report

Understand what videos you create are more likely to get shares. If you are making a lot of how-to videos, a lot of people might be searching for the content, but unless it is highly relevant, it won’t get shared. The type of content that gets shared are the ones that have an interesting story and delights people.

If you find that a lot of people are sharing your content on a specific service, you may consider that as the platform to best expand your channel on.

17. Annotations

Find Out How Many Annotations Were Click Within a Period

When you add annotations to your videos, you would want to know if your audience is actually engaging with it. This report gives you an overview of how frequently your viewers are clicking on the links.

This report also shows you how often viewers choose to close your Annotation completely, giving you an indication that they have no interest in the link.

annotations-clicked-within-a-period

Compare Performance of Different Annotations

This report allows you to see which type of annotations are performing the best for your audience.

compare-performance-of-different-annotations

See Annotation Performance of a Specific Video

Click into a specific video to see which type of annotations are getting engagement and at what time it is happening. If you see that many annotation clicks are happening at a certain point in your video, going forward with your new videos that is where you can insert it.

annotation-performance-of-a-specific-video

How to Use Annotations

By finding out when in the video your audience engages with annotations and what type of annotations performs the best, you will have more insights on designing your videos and where to position the annotations to get the optimal results.

18. Cards

See Which Card Teasers and Cards Are Getting Clicked

Find out which videos are driving the most Card clicks and which type of Cards your audience is most interested in.

card-teasers-get-clicked

Are viewers more interested in watching more videos or are they wanting to read a post from your blog (associated website)? This report is where you can find out by clicking into Card Type.

card-type

See what is happening on screen that is making the card more click-worthy, this can help you plan out your next video so that you direct your viewers’ attention to the clickable card teaser so they see it.

on-screen-contentclick-worthy-link

How to Use Cards Report

This report helps you understand the different cards and how they are performing within your videos so that you can better plan your content to increase the chances of your audience engaging with your cards.

19. End Screens

See How Often The End Screen Is Shown And Clicked

By seeing how many times the End Screen is shown, you can have an idea of how often viewers reach the end of your videos.

Then it’s good to see what percentage of them actually click to engage with your channel and content more.

end-screen-get-clicked

See Performance of Each End Screen Elements

In this report, you can see which End Screen Element is driving the most clicks and better understand the viewer’s motivation at the end of your videos.

performance-of-each-end-screen-elements

Because you can have multiple elements in the End Screen, you would want to see which one is performing the best.

most-popular-screen-elements-within-the-same-video

See Which Videos YouTube Chooses As Best For Viewers

In this report, you can also see the performance of different End Screen Element Types.

videos-that-youtube-chooses-as-best

One of these elements is the Best for Viewer, which allows YouTube to determine which of your video is best to present to the viewer in relation to their browsing history and interests.

By clicking into the Best for Viewer section you can see the top-performing videos that YouTube suggested to your viewers. Does it align with what you think is your best video?

top-performing-videos-that-youtube-suggest

How to Use The End Screens Report

The End Screens report is great for letting you know which of your existing content the audience is interested in seeing after they finished watching one of your videos. As you learn more about your viewers and accumulate more videos, with the help of the End Screens report, you can determine which videos to use to increase Views and Watch Time.

Conclusion

Television producers pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to data companies to get the same set of analytics that YouTube offers its creators for free.

Learning how to use analytics is not always a skill YouTubers think about when they are making videos, but it plays such an instrumental part throughout the whole stage of creation, from ideation to distribution.

Understanding how your videos are performing shines a light on your process, helps you evaluate what is working and what isn’t, and empower you to think beyond the lens and create videos that really resonates with your growing audience.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Filmora, which is equipped with its own footage stock Wondershare Filmstock and will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

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Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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  • Title: "2024 Approved From Views to Revenue Simplifying the Process with a 3-Step Framework for Monitoring YouTube Income"
  • Author: Thomas
  • Created at : 2024-05-31 12:44:17
  • Updated at : 2024-06-01 12:44:17
  • Link: https://youtube-help.techidaily.com/2024-approved-from-views-to-revenue-simplifying-the-process-with-a-3-step-framework-for-monitoring-youtube-income/
  • License: This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.